Construction Drone Services in Melbourne

Construction drone services for progress documentation

Drone filming for construction progress only works when every visit is shot the same way. Creative Kicks flies each progress set from the same angle and altitude as the last one, so a photo from the first month sits next to a photo from the sixth and the change is obvious at a glance.

A one off shot looks good in a newsletter. A series shows a board or a tender panel how the structure went up and what's changed since the last report.

Who books drone work for a building site

Construction drone work at Creative Kicks is booked by builders, property developers, project managers and the comms or marketing teams on major sites. They use the aerial photography and video at AGMs, on the company website, in tender submissions and in stakeholder updates.

Brockman Engineering, part of EVZ Limited, used our progress sets for exactly that on two refinery builds in Victoria. INTREC used our drone and ground imagery for marketing collateral and tender submissions on the Victorian Tunnelling Centre. Developers also book aerials for sales content. Our drone services in Melbourne page has the full rundown.

What you get from a site visit

A Creative Kicks site visit can deliver 4K aerial video, high resolution stills, a progress set shot to match the previous visit, and timelapse. Everything that's included is listed in the quote, so you know what's coming before we fly.

• 4K aerial video, colour graded and ready to cut
• High resolution stills, edited and colour corrected
• Progress sets shot from the same angle and altitude every visit
• Timelapse from a camera installed on site, custom quoted
• Orthomosaic mapping and 360 panoramas, if the brief calls for them

Editing, cut downs, captions and voice over are only included when the quote says so.

How a job runs, from brief to flight

A Creative Kicks drone job on a building site runs in four stages: the brief, the airspace and approvals work, the flight call on the day, and the quote that covers it all. Most of the effort happens before anyone turns up on site.

1. Brief and site details

   Send the site address, the dates or milestones you want covered, the deliverables and a site contact. I check the airspace and the site, then tell you what's possible before anything is booked.

2. Airspace and approvals before the day

   We sort the CASA approvals and operational authorisations included in the quote before the day, not on it. You look after site access, landowner consent and any crowd or traffic control. CASA approvals can take up to two months when CASA is busy, so get in early. The rules sit with CASA, and our guide to drone permits in Melbourne covers how the process works.

3. Weather and the flight call

   Flights depend on weather, airspace, approvals and what's happening on site, so a booking never locks in a flight or a shot. Every location gets a Job Safety Assessment and a backup drone comes on every shoot. No client brief overrides a safety call, not even a tight deadline and an angry project manager. I'd rather reschedule a flight than fly outside safe limits.

4. How it's charged

   Drone work is charged in half day or full day blocks, not flight minutes, because setup, exclusion zones and safety checks take time. Each job is quoted on its own. For the bigger picture on pricing, read what drone photography costs in Melbourne.

Projects we've flown

Creative Kicks has flown construction projects for Brockman Engineering and INTREC across Victoria, from refinery tank builds at Corio and Hastings to a tunnelling training centre in Chadstone and a hotel refurbishment next to the MCG.

Viva Energy Corio tank builds

Brockman Engineering built three new tanks at the Viva Energy refinery in Corio. We flew regular progress updates for their website, AGMs and tender submissions, and installed a timelapse camera to capture the pipeline install between the tanks. Read the Viva Energy Corio case study.

United Petroleum terminal expansion, Hastings

Also for Brockman Engineering, we shot regular aerial and ground photography of the new tanks going in at the United Refinery in Hastings. The hard part was flying close to full petroleum tankers on a working site. See the United Petroleum terminal expansion job.

Victorian Tunnelling Centre, Chadstone

INTREC engaged us for Holmesglen to capture drone photography and drone video of the Victorian Tunnelling Centre build at the Drummond Street campus. The site sits close to large overhead powerlines and the M1 freeway. Here's the Victorian Tunnelling Centre project.

Pullman Melbourne on the Park

A six part video series for INTREC on a live hotel refurbishment beside the MCG, filmed through the COVID-19 pandemic. It covered pre production, cinema cameras, drone video, interviews, editing and closed captions. Watch the Pullman on the Park series.

Construction site photography from the ground and the air

Construction site photography usually needs both views. On the Viva Energy, United Petroleum and Victorian Tunnelling Centre jobs, Creative Kicks shot ground photography alongside the drone work, so one visit covered the whole site from above and the work itself up close.

That's the mix most construction photography in Melbourne calls for. The aerial shows where the build sits and how far along it is. The ground shots show the construction work at the scale people stand at. If the footage is heading into a marketing video instead of a progress report, my post on drone videography for marketing covers how to plan it in.

What this service isn't

Creative Kicks construction drone work is visual documentation: photos, video and timelapse for people to look at. It isn't survey grade mapping, volume calculations, thermal inspection or BIM data. If the project needs measured survey data, a surveyor is the right booking.

Common questions