DroneDeploy, the world’s leading reality capture platform, today announced that Turner Construction Company, an international construction services company, has been awarded DroneDeploy’s 2022 Innovator of the Year Award.

When a series of hurricanes hit Lake Charles, Louisiana and damaged the L’Auberge Casino Resort, Turner Construction Company initially expected to spend weeks conducting inspections and making repairs. But thanks to Turner’s Virtual Design and Construction (VDC) department’s dedication to going above and beyond for its customers, a job that would’ve taken weeks took as little as six hours. 

Turner achieved the seemingly impossible by using DroneDeploy’s facade inspection capabilities to swap out swing stages for pinpoint-accurate aerial facade analysis. With this ingenious approach, Turner was able to not only save time on inspections and repairs but money as well, reducing project costs by over $25,000. 

The number one general contractor in the ENR 400, Turner prioritizes innovation, and this is just one example of their dedication paying off in a big way. 

Turner’s commitment to innovation goes far beyond just a single project. In fact, they’ve built a department solely dedicated to empowering people to innovate and helping them keep up with the fast-paced AEC industry. 

Turner’s Innovation and VDC departments push their industry forward by encouraging the adoption of a wide range of tools including artificial intelligence, unmanned aerial vehicles, virtual/mixed reality, and ground robotics, just to name a few. To foster open creativity across their innovation and VDC teams they pose the simple question, “how might we?” throughout projects to imagine ways they can leverage innovation to improve everything that they do. 

"At Turner we apply a deliberate approach to innovation that channels the ingenuity of our people to advance breakthroughs that deliver groundbreaking value,” said Gary Chapman, Mid-South Region VDC Manager at Turner. 

Turner’s Innovation and VDC departments do more than just prioritize new solutions, they deliberately partner with customers to make their aerial and ground capture ideas a reality. By allowing people to pursue their passions, Turner is able to unlock the innovative potential of every project participant; from the youngest engineer to the most experienced superintendent.

“We are always striving to share and find new ways to do things by providing mechanisms, structure, and a culture of accelerating improvement and innovation,” said Derek Rolfe, Central Region VDC Manager at Turner. 

By placing their focus on the cutting edge of technological advancements Turner finds solutions, invents products, and creates novel workflows to disrupt an increasingly competitive AEC industry.

Turner’s commitment to implementing new and exciting ways to deploy reality capture technology made them a clear choice as the winner of DroneDeploy’s Innovator of the Year Award, which they received at the DroneDeploy 2022 Conference in Dallas, Texas.