Buildings 2.0 Library
Conversations on the future of the built environment
81 episodes of the Buildings 2.0 podcast, each bound as a short book: the ideas, the numbers and the lines worth keeping.
Season 2, Episode 4 /Apr 21, 2025
Why drones may finally solve NYC's scaffolding crisis
Scott Harrigan, Harkin Aerial
Apr 21, 2025 /Reality Capture & Existing Conditions
Why drones may finally solve NYC's scaffolding crisis
Scott Harrigan founded Harkin Aerial, a New York drone and reality-capture company that surveys building facades and job sites from the air. He started on the ground as a surveyor. In a city that requires hands-on facade inspections and scaffold drops every 60 feet, he explains what a drone can and cannot replace, and why aerial capture is the most regulated data collection on any project.
Scott Harrigan, Founder, Harkin Aerial
In this conversation
How flying first gives facade inspectors a 3D picture of a building and reduces the number of scaffold drops New York law requires.
Why the real shift in drone work was cameras getting dramatically better, not the aircraft, with basic models delivered in about 48 hours.
Scott's note that city agencies now accept point clouds as deliverables, which would have been unthinkable a few years ago.
The hard part of the business: not flying, but processing the data and translating it into whatever software the client already uses.
The biggest misconception we run into is that the drone kind of stands on its own, that a drone team is its own thing.
Scott Harrigan
Chapters
From the ground to the air
How a surveyor ended up flying drones over Manhattan facades.
Cameras first, then LiDAR
Choosing between photographs, LiDAR and meshes when you are not sure what you need.
A high-rise in a day
What a day of capture on a high-rise produces, and how it is priced.
The most regulated capture on site
The FAA rules that make aerial capture the most regulated part of a project.
By the numbers
New York's sidewalk sheds when the city set out to take them down
active sheds
of sidewalk covered
days up, on average
Scott's business case for drones is fewer scaffold drops. This is what the alternative looks like at city scale.
Source: NYC Mayor's Office, Get Sheds Down (2023 to 2024) ↗Beyond visual line of sight
Flying beyond the pilot's line of sight, and what it will unlock.
We are the most regulated portion of a data capture ever.
Scott Harrigan
Takeaways
A drone team does not stand on its own. If month-over-month data has to line up, aerial capture must tie into the project's survey control like any other measurement.
If you do not know what you need, start with cameras. Everyone can read a photograph, and photogrammetry turns those photographs into the same meshes and point clouds laser scanning produces.
Any paid drone flight is regulated by the FAA and requires a Part 107 license; engineering firms are right to contract it out rather than fly themselves.
We've been successful because I've been in the shoes of my customer before.
Scott Harrigan