Wing turns its focus to construction site drone deliveries

Google’s drone delivery company Wing Aviation has turned its focus to construction site deliveries in Australia as workers continue to share the benefits they would bring to construction sites around the country.

With the majority of the world, including Australia spending more time at home, families have turned to sprucing up their homes with renovations, leading to more workers coming to your house. One hang-up for contractors includes the possibility of not having the right part or tool for a job after starting work.

This is where Wing and workers envision delivery drones coming into play. Rather than having to drive down to the hardware store, you can now open an app, order the part or tool, and in a few minutes, a drone comes flying up and delivers that drill bit you needed.

Jonah Ale, Apprentice Carpenter, CBC Projects said:

“Having items delivered by drone is definitely something to look forward to. It would save two or three of us having to go off to different job sites or different hardware stores in order to find what we need.”

A report found that tradespeople make around 60 million unplanned trips to the hardware store after realizing they don’t have something they need to complete jobs. These trips average about an hour and costs companies more than $2 billion in labor every year. Not to mention the extra CO2 produced during these trips.

Paul Charlton, Browns Plains Hardware added:

“Drone delivery presents a big opportunity for tradespeople when they’re working on a job. Their time is money, and they don’t want to drop tools to leave the job site for 30 minutes or more when they can get what they need straight away.”

Just think, the amount of money and time that can be saved if delivery drones come to the rescue for just a few of these jobs. Wing Aviation has kindly put together some estimates on what it would look like below:

Drone delivery could save households:

• $120 million each year on construction and maintenance work 
• 1.5 million hours of time spent waiting for tradespeople to pick up items during maintenance jobs by replacing just 10% of trips to the store
• Up to $2500 and reduce build time by one week on a $250,000 renovation

Drone delivery could save construction and maintenance businesses:

• $285 million each year in labor and vehicle expenses
• 2-3 days a year in apprentices time spent picking up items offsite, freeing up their time for on-the-job learning
• The time needed for trades teams to complete one more construction project and 10 additional maintenance jobs each year.

Photo: Wing Aviation