Mason Street Furniture Ltd commissioned Drone Site UK to inspect a series of tall lighting towers at Doncaster iPort. Water had been finding its way into the columns, with the potential to reach the electronics inside, and they needed to confirm that the weather cover plate above each tower’s pulley system was correctly in place, right at the very top of every column.

Checking the head of a lighting tower from the ground normally means a cherry picker or a climb at each location. Instead, we flew a drone up to each tower in turn and photographed the top of every column close up. That gave a clear, safe and quick view of each cover plate, with no access equipment and no disruption to the busy site below.

What we did

• Flew and photographed the tops of all 11 lighting towers
• Captured close-up images of the cover plate above each pulley system
• Confirmed every cover was correctly in place
• Noted two columns with birds’ nests (none present at the time) so they could be factored into maintenance planning
• Handed over the full set of photographs, organised tower by tower

Every one of the 11 covers was found to be in place, giving the client the reassurance they were looking for and a clear photographic record of each tower head.

An interactive site map

To make the results easy to use, we also produced an interactive map of the site. Each tower is pinned in its true GPS position, taken from the drone at the moment each photograph was captured, so the client can click any column and jump straight to its images and details, with no folders to dig through. It turns a large set of photographs into something anyone can navigate in seconds.