Two Unitas employees have become fully fledged drone pilots. Nicola Saxon & Eddie Chesters have passed their GVC (General Visual Line of Sight Certificate) practical flight examination and now join Tony Philips as drone pilots for Unitas. As Property Surveyors for Responsive Repairs & Maintenance, this additional string to the pairs bow will help them to complete their surveying works. The drone comes in very useful for roof surveys and where accessibility is an issue or is dangerous – the drone helps remove potential safety risks from completing property surveys. The drone camera can identify heat loss from buildings and also helps detail any structural issues that may otherwise be difficult to spot.
Tony Philips became the first Unitas drone operator earlier on this year and has been helping Nicola & Eddie throughout their course and additional flight hours.
Nicola, who has been with the housing and repairs company for almost 8 years, joins a minority of UK female drone pilots which represent only 4% of all drone pilots population here in the UK. Although it’s a great achievement to help represent this small demographic here at Unitas, Nicola doesn’t consider her gender and the female demographic. Nicola didn’t realise there was such a small percentage of qualified female pilots when completing the course “in our small team, we all do the same job regardless of gender, we all work together to ensure our jobs are completed to a high standard”.
Martin Heath, Head of Service for Repairs and Maintenance, “I am delighted to have 3 pilots at Unitas, all 3 members of staff have put in hours of hard work and I am proud of them for achieving such high standard passes. This means we have a dedicated team that can now operate the drone safely on jobs.”
“Not only has the use of this new technology enabled financial savings it has reduced the potential risks involved in Working at Height”
Unitas was one of the first companies in the UK to have its very own in-house drone and since its introduction the equipment has proved invaluable. This technology is having such a positive impact on the works the team can complete and is helping to transform the way surveys can be performed.
