What to send your capture provider before the first flight

Send six things and the job goes right: the boundary, the horizontal and vertical datum, the deliverable and format, the tolerance, the site access constraints, and the date the data actually has to be in somebody's hands. Reality capture rarely fails in the air. It fails on the scoping call, when one of those six gets deferred and the deliverable arrives correct against an assumption nobody said out loud.

1. The boundary

Any form you have. KML, KMZ, SHP, DWG, a georeferenced PDF, or an aerial with the limits drawn on it in whatever tool is on your desktop. All of those beat a street address and a description.

The boundary sets flight lines, acreage, mobilization time, whether the site is one flight or four, and whether we are going to be overhead of a neighbor who ought to be told.

Add a buffer if design will need one. Pushing a boundary out fifty feet before the flight costs almost nothing. Discovering during design that you needed data twenty feet outside the limits costs a second mobilization.

2. The horizontal and vertical datum

This is the single most common reason a deliverable gets rejected, and it is entirely preventable.

Tell us the coordinate system and the vertical datum the project runs on. Florida State Plane North or East, the zone, feet or meters, and NAVD88 or something else. If the project sits on a local grid or a site datum tied to a specific control point, say so and send the control.

A cloud delivered in the wrong frame is not slightly wrong. It is somewhere else. Reprojecting after the fact is possible and it is work your team should not be doing. If the vertical was never tied correctly in the first place, no transformation fixes it.

3. The deliverable, and the software that opens it

"A point cloud" is not a deliverable. These are:

• Classified LAS 1.4, ground and vegetation separated
• Civil 3D surface plus one foot contours in DWG
• Bare earth DTM as LandXML
• Orthomosaic as GeoTIFF at one inch ground sample distance
• Feature linework in DGN for MicroStation
• RCP so the whole design team can open it in Recap

If three people downstream need three different formats, say so now. Three exports off one processed dataset is nothing. Reprocessing next month because nobody mentioned the third one is a real cost.

4. The tolerance, or the decision it has to support

Send the written accuracy requirement if you have one. If you do not, describe what the data has to hold up under. Both are useful and they are different questions.

"Drainage study, forty acres, about two feet of relief across the whole parcel" tells me more than a number would. It says the vertical is unforgiving, breaklines are going to matter, and the control plan needs to be tighter than it would be for a stockpile volume.

A provider who will not tell you before the flight whether a site can hold your tolerance will tell you after.

5. What is on the ground that we cannot see from an aerial

• Gates, locks, guard shacks, and who has to be called
• Whether the property is occupied and whether residents or guests need notice
• Active construction, crane picks, lift work
• Livestock, dogs, or a neighbor with strong opinions about aircraft
• Anything on site that should not end up in the imagery
• Nearby heliports, hospitals, or military activity you already know about

Airspace research is our job. Everything else on that list is faster coming from you.

6. The date it actually has to be in hand

Not the date on the schedule. The date somebody needs the data to keep the project moving. Those are usually different, and knowing the real one lets us sequence honestly instead of promising a date and renegotiating it later.

"Before the inspection period closes on the nineteenth" is a constraint we can plan around. "As soon as possible" is not.

What should come back before anyone mobilizes

A written scope confirmation stating the boundary, the datum, the deliverables and formats, the tolerance, the schedule, and what is explicitly not included. Ambiguity in a capture scope is never accidental. If a provider will not put those six things in writing before flying, that tells you where the risk is being parked.

One thing worth saying out loud

If the data is going to a licensed surveyor or engineer who will certify something based on it, say that on the first call. It changes the control plan, the checks, and the documentation that ships with the delivery.

Capture data supports the professional of record. It does not replace them. A vendor who suggests otherwise is a liability wearing the costume of a bargain.