Severance Library

The Project

A long-duration Colorado construction project that demanded documentation from groundbreaking through closeout. Wet Dog Drones provided continuous progress monitoring that kept the project timeline visible and accountable — every other week from mobilization until the building dried in, then monthly through final punch list.

That long arc produced two separate stories. The first is the day the city came back with an $80,000 road-damage claim — and the pre-construction ortho split the difference. The second is what 30+ flights of bi-weekly monitoring look like when you compress them into 85 seconds. Both are below.

The Pre-Construction Story: $40,000 Saved

The Problem

After construction was complete, the City of Severance came back claiming $80,000 in road damage caused by construction activity. The roads showed cracks, potholes, and deterioration that the city said was new damage from heavy equipment and construction traffic.

The contractor was facing a massive change order — one of those "your problem, you pay" moments that every contractor dreads. Without proof of what the roads looked like before construction started, they were in a weak negotiating position.

The Solution

Before anyone stepped on site, Wet Dog Drones had documented the existing road conditions with timestamped, georeferenced orthomosaics. Every crack, every pothole, every imperfection — captured and stored with metadata that can't be disputed.

The Result

Armed with pre-construction documentation showing existing road damage, the contractor negotiated from a position of strength. Instead of paying $80,000, they split the difference.

"I was the hero because I saved a big chunk of money. The drone documentation made all the difference."

The 16-Month Story: Bi-Weekly Progress Monitoring

The same project also produced one of the cleanest long-arc documentation sets we've run. Bi-weekly flights from groundbreaking until the building dried in, then monthly through final punch list and closeout. Every flight produced an ortho, a 3D model, and a comparison against the previous capture. The result is a time-lapse that tells the whole story in under two minutes.

The Schedule

The Time-Lapse

Roughly 30 captures, 16 months of progress, 85 seconds of video.

The Deliverables

The Lesson

Every project needs baseline documentation before ground is broken. Roads, curbs, landscaping, site conditions — if it's not documented, it doesn't exist in a dispute. For a fraction of the potential change order cost, the contractor had insurance that paid for itself 10x over.

And every long-duration project benefits from bi-weekly progress monitoring. The pre-construction flight is flight zero. Every flight after that is measured against it. The deliverable is accountability — to the owner, the GC, the subs, and the schedule. Sixteen months of bi-weekly flights is a lot of work. An 85-second time-lapse that shows the whole project is worth more than the hours that went into making it.