// Industries / Industrial
Drone LiDAR for Industrial & Energy
Plants, pipelines, terminals, and yards mapped from the air — accurate volumetrics, corridors, and site as-builts without shutting anything down or putting a crew in a hazardous area.
- FAA-Certified Pilots
- Licensed Surveyor Partners
- Serving All 50 States
- 24-Hour Quote Turnaround
01// The Problem
You Can't Shut Down the Plant to Measure It
On an operating facility, ground-based measurement carries costs that never appear on the surveyor's invoice: permits and escorts for every crew, work suspended around live areas, people walking under racks and alongside process units to get a shot. So the measuring doesn't happen. Site drawings drift years out of date, stockpile inventories get reconciled from truck counts and walked estimates that finance quietly distrusts, and expansion projects start from as-builts that describe a facility that no longer exists.
Linear assets are worse. A pipeline or transmission corridor crosses terrain no crew can walk economically, and the encroachments, washouts, and grade changes along it stay invisible until they become incidents.
02// The Fix
Measure Everything From Above the Fence Line
Drone LiDAR scanning captures the whole facility — structures, terrain, laydown yards, piles — in a flight measured in hours, with nobody entering a hazardous area and nothing taken offline. Where it earns its keep:
- Stockpile volumetrics. Aggregate, coal, chips, slag — every pile measured against a defined base surface, on a repeatable monthly or quarterly cadence that gives finance numbers worth reconciling against.
- Site as-builts. A current point cloud of the facility becomes the base map for expansions, turnaround planning, and drainage fixes — replacing drawings that predate half the equipment on site.
- Corridors and rights-of-way. Corridor and utility mapping covers pipelines, transmission lines, and rail spurs end to end, capturing terrain and encroachment conditions along the full alignment.
- Terrain for compliance work. Bare-earth DEMs and contours feed drainage, containment, and grading analyses around ponds, berms, and impoundments.
Facilities rarely sit in convenient places. Our vetted pilot network covers all 50 states, so the remote terminal gets the same capture standard as the plant outside a metro.
03// Deliverables
Numbers Your Engineers and Accountants Both Trust
Through our point cloud processing pipeline you get classified LAS/LAZ of the full site, DEM GeoTIFFs, CAD contours, and — for inventory work — per-pile volume reports comparable period over period because every flight registers to the same control. Corridor projects deliver the same formats in strips along the alignment, ready for your GIS and integrity-management systems.
04// FAQ
Industrial Questions, Answered
Do operations have to stop while you fly?
No — that is the point. Capture happens from the air, above and outside your process areas, coordinated with your safety and security teams. No scaffolding, no confined-space entries, no ground crew walking live areas, and no interruption to production.
How accurate are drone LiDAR stockpile volumes?
Volumes are computed from a dense, engineering-grade point cloud over the full pile surface — including the back slopes a ground walk tends to approximate — measured against a defined base surface. Flying every pile the same way each period also makes quarter-over-quarter comparisons consistent, which is what inventory reconciliation actually needs.
Can you map a pipeline or transmission corridor, not just a plant site?
Yes. Long-linear routes are our corridor mapping service: capture planned in strips along the alignment, priced per linear mile, delivering classified point clouds, DEMs, and contours along the full right-of-way.
What about security requirements at our facility?
Our pilots are FAA-certified, vetted before they ever fly for us, and briefed on your site-specific access, escort, and data-handling rules. We routinely operate under NDAs and deliver data only to the contacts you designate.
05// Start a Project
Get a Quote for Your Facility
Upload a KML/KMZ of the site or corridor — quotes in 24 hours, operations uninterrupted.
- Direct line
- (877) 729-5311
- team@prolidar.com