Since July 2025, Drone Services Ireland has flown weekly progress-mapping flights over a hyperscale data centre build in Dublin, layered with aerial 360 panoramas and a fixed time-lapse camera. The programme is scheduled for at least two years.
Hyperscale data centres are among the largest and longest construction programmes in Ireland. Over two or more years, the site changes every week: earthworks give way to structure, structure to envelope, envelope to plant. The project team needs a record of that change which is consistent, dated and measurable – not a folder of photographs taken whenever someone remembered.
A single method cannot do all of that. Measurement needs a survey-grade aerial dataset. Stakeholder communication needs something people can actually explore. And the days between drone visits still need recording. The brief was a monitoring programme, not a survey.
The client cannot be named. Everything below describes the programme as it runs today.
Every week a drone mapping flight produces a dated aerial record of the whole site. Flown on a consistent schedule, these datasets stack into a week-by-week history that progress can be measured against – the layer the programme relies on for evidence rather than impressions.
A 360 panorama captured from the air gives stakeholders an interactive view of the site they can turn and explore, rather than a fixed frame. For a project with many parties who never set foot on site, it is the layer that communicates.
Between drone visits a fixed camera records the site continuously and unattended. The drone flight is the measurement; the camera is the chronology – nothing that happens on a Tuesday afternoon goes unrecorded. Together they cover both what changed and when.
Ground-level 360 panoramas are being added to the programme, extending the interactive record from the air to the floor plate. Read how the cadence for a programme like this is chosen in our guide to how often a construction site should be surveyed.
The same flight, the same week, every week: a dataset whose value is in its regularity. Each new capture is comparable with every one before it.
Mapping data for the engineers, 360 panoramas for everyone else. One programme serves the site team, the client and the stakeholders who only ever see the site on a screen.
Weekly flights plus a continuous fixed camera mean the record has no blind days – the combination most monitored sites end up needing.
Running a long programme that needs a dated record? Construction drone monitoring covers weekly, fortnightly and monthly retainers with 360 panoramas and fixed cameras as options. Request a 24-hour quote or call 087 205 2331.
Scheduled progress mapping, 360 panoramas and fixed time-lapse cameras on retainer.
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