Drone Law Pro attorneys at Traverse Legal represent a number of large companies looking to use drones for their enterprise, or as an add-one service for their customers. In this PodCast, Enrico Schaefer discusses the key points your company needs to consider when integrating drones into your enterprise. [listen below]
Integrating Drones into Your Enterprise Or Company:
This is Enrico Schaefer, I’m a Drone Lawyer with the law firm Traverse Legal. Today we are going to talk about Integration of Drones into Your Enterprise. For large companies and organizations that want to start using Drones, there is a potentially more challenging path in order to be able to become operational and develop a comprehensive UAV Program for your company and your organization. [Listen to the Podcast Below To Learn More].
Corporate Buy-In & Resources:
Invariably, the problem with that approach was those people who raised their hand did not have corporate buy-in, did not have adequate resources, and were not supported by the organization in a way that would allow them to actually get very far down the line. So, the raising your hand in the back of the room approach, really did not work for most organizations. Those efforts may have garnered some interest. They may have developed some information for the organization. Perhaps the organization got their Section 333 Exemption, but in terms of actual integration within the enterprise it really did not work very often.
What we are seeing now, with large organizations, is that our law firm is getting contact because the Board of Directors, the CEO, and/or the upper executives of the company are starting to see their competitors use UAVs either for their own purposes or part of a service offering to customers. Now add a board and executive level of these large enterprises and they are realizing that they have to really get their brain around UAV and start to bring UAV to the forefront.
So, once you get that board level buy in, a couple of things happen. One, nothing motivates like competition. So, when competitors are the driving force that are causing the Board of Directors to launch into UAV, then that’s very motivating.
They are now providing the resources and the corporate structure in order to be make some gains with UAV within their organizations. As a Drone lawyer who helps companies integrate Drones into their enterprise we first analysis what the need is. Is this enterprise looking to offer Drone services to customers as part of their service offering? This is very typical. The organization already provides infra structure inspection. They now want to add UAV to their infra structure inspection program. They need to figure out how they are going to be able beyond line of sight.
A large organization is doing huge construction projects. For example: stadiums, downtown buildings, etc. They now want to use UAV within the construction environment in order to be able to do volume metrics, traffic studies, and as built documentation. These types of activities and of course at a construction sight all of the vendors and sub-contractors want to bring UAV, so they need standardized sUAS policies and procedures.
Developing Policies & Procedures for Drones:
This brings me to my second point. The second thing after we offer is analyzation of the purpose for UAV Operations within the enterprise. The next thing we are going need to do is to develop procedures and policies that govern how UAVs are allowed to be used and under what circumstances.
Developing a UAV Policy Manual that will be adopted at the Board level and implemented from an executive level down is critically important. Once you start to pick off the first operational parameters for an enterprise – an enterprise might have 1000 different things they might be able to do with Drones, but it is important to pick a couple of early ones so that you can start to get your baited testing in and see how the operations are going to work. To see what kind of resources the enterprise is going to need in order to roll out a UAV program.
So, lets talk a little bit about enterprise resources for UAV. It is more than a single person who is going to figure it out. It is going to be a department or a division within a department that is going to be in charge of UAV. They would be in charge of adopting and implementing the polices. They will definitely be in charge of enforcing the policies with things like the qualifications of the pilot, how many drone flight crew members will there be, whether or not visual observers will be required, what happens to the data output from the Drone flight, and how is licensing going to work with customers? So, you are going to need more than one person there and you will need money.
Developing a Budget for UAV Operations:
Enterprises are going to have to figure out what the budget is going to be for Drone Operations. The third thing we do for enterprises is that we figure out what is this department going to look like. What kind of funds are going to be needed? Funds are not only needed to buy the Drones, but to be able to employ the pilots, the flight crews, etc., in order to support those Drone operations at a professional level.
Is your Enterprise Ready to Fly Drones For Business?
If you are looking to role out Drones within your large company or enterprise, you are going to be thinking about those three things. You are going to want to be thinking about corporate buy in. You are going to want to be thinking about policies and procedures. Finally, you are going to be thinking about resources.
That’s all for today. My name is Drone attorney Enrico Schaefer and we will see you next time.
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