Inspecting Indoor Waterparks with the Elios 3

Thanks to drone inspections with the Elios 3, you can now inspect, analyze, and report on the entirety of an indoor waterpark in under 7 days! Find out how Passero Associates achieves this at sites across North America.

Benefits In A Nutshell

An indoor waterpark promises hours of fun for families and friends, but an endless balance of maintenance and open hours for the operators. These spaces are a unique challenge to operate, with infrastructure that is mounted at height and under constant, unpredictable strain and a corrosive, humid environment. Failure to adequately inspect and maintain these spaces has seen material fall from the roofspace, falling on people and resulting in both injury and lawsuits. Examples of this include an accident at Kalahari Park in 2017/2018, where a section of duct fell onto people in a pool, or the more recent accident at Gaylord Resort in Colorado Springs in 2024. Preventive maintenance in indoor waterparks is thus critical to preventing overhead falling hazards and structural integrity risks, ensuring the safety of both guests and staff. 

Facility owners at indoor waterparks need to gather data for condition assessments to help them plan upcoming works and identify potential hazards quickly. The access to the high-up slides and structures, however, can be an obstacle and calls for an innovative solution. ReadyVIS, a department within Passero Associates, backed by over 5 years of expertise in this specific field and over 50 years of engineering experience, is using Elios drones to gather this data without risks to staff, guests, or infrastructure.

How Drone Inspections Inform Engineers at Indoor Waterparks

Passero Associates is an engineering and architecture firm with specialists across the AEC sector. Internally, their ReadyVIS department manages the use of emerging technologies in their projects, including drones, internal tooling, scanning, automation, and both 3D and VR visualization.. The ReadyVIS team takes on missions that involve working with complex assets and obstructed environments. They aim to minimize asset downtime while optimizing safety standards and cutting costs. 

The Elios 3 at an indoor venue, being prepared for an inspection flight

To achieve this, they’ve been using Elios drones since 2018, transitioning from the Elios 1 to the Elios 3. They highlight the Elios 3’s extensive capacity for quality data collection, confined space access, and the localization of points of interest as factors that streamline their work. In the past, they’ve successfully used it to inspect indoor waterparks, including Great Wolf Lodge and Kalahari Resorts, providing quality data to facility owners and maintenance management.

Why Should You Use the Elios 3 to Inspect Indoor Waterparks? 

The safe and smooth operation of indoor waterparks stems from preventive maintenance - the process of regularly inspecting equipment and addressing issues before they can escalate. These inspections must be thorough and efficient, striking a balance between comprehensive assessments and not prolonging downtime. The Elios 3’s easy access, wherein it doesn’t require scaffolding or rope access, is a game-changer for this. A few minutes of flight can provide the full picture of a pipe or shaft that would previously have taken hours to access in part, let alone to completely assess. 

The ReadyVIS team emphasised 3 key features of the Elios 3 which make it work well for these applications:

1. Localized data: When the Elios 3 flies, it simultaneously captures 4K videos and a 3D point cloud. When a fault is spotted - for example, a loose screw or rust build-up - the location and photo are saved as a point of interest (POI). When it comes to analysis, you can navigate the 3D model and see exactly where each POI is and the asset’s condition. This makes it easy to recommend maintenance work and catalog POIs by order of severity/urgency. When complete, the data is viewed in Flyability’s software Inspector 5, allowing for clear side-by-side comparisons between points of interest and their location in the inspection area, empowering easy maintenance planning. 
2. Safety: Using a remote inspection tool like the Elios 3 means that scaffolding, cherry pickers, and rope access are not needed. This cuts risks to inspectors as they no longer have to work at height, and also saves time on special safety assessments and permits needed for this type of work. The ReadyVIS team can stay comfortably on the ground while collecting all of the data they need for the inspection with the Elios 3.
3. Speed: A combination of the data quality, improved safety, and ease of access achieved with the Elios 3 means that the inspectors at ReadyVIS can turn around their projects faster than traditional inspectors. This is thanks to the comprehensive data collection and the easy analysis with the localized data alongside time and cost savings with the drone’s remote access.
   

Passero Associated has been working with various indoor waterparks for years, and their ReadyVIS department demonstrates that using the right tools can make this seemingly complex inspection task straightforward and safe. 

The Elios 3's camera is used to help identify areas of interest or missing equipment so the problem can be dealt with before it escalates

Drone Inspection Process for Indoor Waterparks

For an indoor waterpark inspection with the Elios 3 solution, the ReadyVIS team typically turn around its results in 7 days or fewer. This includes the flights for data collection, analysis, and report generation - alongside detailed quality assurance and quality control. The POIs are included in the report with their location and a condition analysis. ReadyVIS's "remediation tracking" workflow allows facility owners to utilize the produced PDF reports (with their QR codes) to attach to work order requests and effortlessly update the web records of the work performed - including who worked on it, when, and with any relevant image attachments. These reports are incredibly detailed, with a recent waterpark inspection comprising over 5,000 (and counting!) individual points of interest. 

A waterpark inspection includes assessing the HVAC ducts, fire suppression systems, portable water pipes, ceiling fans, and general steel framing and roof structure. All of this can be assessed with the Elios 3 and requires no work at height for the inspection team. They use the 4K camera as well as the 3D model captured by the drone’s LiDAR scanner. In some cases, the drone’s infrared camera is also used to identify hot or cold spots on a recently energized duct system. 

The view from the Elios 3 's 4K camera shows a broken guy wire 

For each inspection, the drone is flown in a linear manner to make it easy for reviewers to recognize and comprehensively assess the asset from end to end. To ensure total coverage of the asset, the ReadyVIS pilots use thorough flight plans and cross-check the post-flight trajectory, something the Elios 3’s localized point cloud (viewable from the flight control app) assists in ensuring quick pilot orientation between flights. 

Once the inspection is complete, ReadyVIS presents the results to their clients on their custom 3D ineractive web-platform. The data is also shared as an executive summary PDF, containing a brief overview of their findings, site plans, applicable as-built drawings or details, and individual POI reports organized in order of severity - including the remediation QR code for future repair/replacement tracking. 

Unlocking Indoor Inspections with the Elios 3

The use of drones for indoor inspections of hard-to-access facilities is now an accepted method of work. Over the years, ReadyVIS has watched its techniques become more widely recognized, singling them out as early adopters of innovative tools. 

ReadyVIS presents their results via their custom platform,  showing the site space and points of interest and defects they identified with their Elios 3

ReadyVIS reports that their results are highly regarded by both facility owners and operators, empowering them with the exact data they need to make decisions on how to ensure the safety of their sites. The results achieved by ReadyVIS have seen their work expand across new construction projects where owners and contractors want an exhaustive list of assets inspected and checked off as safe. This use of the Elios 3 combines the need for safer means of access with the pressure to complete maintenance and open the sites as quickly as possible. The success of ReadyVIS’s work is evident in their repeat inspections at waterparks and other infrastructure sites in the USA and they expect to continue this work - alongside other complex confined-space inspections with their remote access solutions like the Elios 3!

Discover more about the Elios 3 for infrastructure!