A ceiling failure at a frozen food distribution center during the 2025 holiday season caused an immediate shutdown with no end in sight - until Plowman Craven used the Elios 3 to assess the damage and help plan repair work.
|
Access Traditional methods couldn’t reach this damaged structure without extending the shutdown but the Elios 3 easily flew between dozens of ceiling hangers and delivered key insights to empower a return to work. |
Speed The Elios 3 was on-site within 48 hours of the initial contact by the site managers and provided the necessary data in less than 1 day, delivering engineering-level data to inform decision-making. |
|
Safety No work at height was necessary using scaffolding or MEWPs, and no people had to approach the damaged roof area, keeping the team away from any potential hazards. |
Data Quality The Elios 3’s 4K camera and LiDAR sensor provided clear results, including points of interest localised within a point cloud, making it easy for maintenance teams to triage and prioritize repair work based on damage severity. . |
Planned structural assessments for facilities are a headache for everyone involved. Emergency, unplanned ones are even more stressful. Traditionally, inspecting the structural elements of a building like a warehouse or data center would call for a pause in normal operations while scaffolding is used to access roof spaces and HVAC systems for the inspection - and that’s before any maintenance work is carried out. This limits work near the inspection zone and requires stringent protocols to ensure inspector safety.
Drones offer a faster, safer way to complete facility structural assessments without asking inspectors to work at height or access confined spaces. They offer a new way to optimize data collection and limit the downtime caused by inspections - both for routine inspections and emergency response scenarios, as faced by Plowman Craven in 2025. Read on to hear their story!
Over the holiday period of 2025, a frozen food facility in Europe faced a crisis: the roof had caved in. It was the worst timing, with high demand for food supply chains and limited staff availability. A total shutdown of the floor was necessary to ensure the safety of staff. Every second the site wasn’t operating meant frozen goods couldn’t be delivered or transported as expected, creating a knock-on effect within the supply chain and massive losses of stock from the food already in storage. The site managers needed an immediate response to assess the structure and determine if the damage was limited to the ceiling systems or if the primary roof structure itself had been damaged. If the primary roof structure had failed, the repairs would be more complex and require a prolonged project with additional teams. If the problem were limited to just the ceiling systems, it would be easier to mitigate the situation and plan quick, safe remediation efforts.
The facility managers called Plowman Craven to see if they could help, and a team soon arrived on-site with the Elios 3, ready to investigate.
Disaster: the ceiling failure put the entire operational floor out of action, with no safe means of access to investigate the problem until the Elios 3 was brought in by the Plowman Craven team
Plowman Craven is a surveying company that operates around the world on complex projects where digitization is the priority. Backed by 60 years of experience, they are at the forefront of technology adoption, so they can deliver industry-leading results. Their inspection team uses drones and unmanned tools to gather data in extreme environments, from tunnels that haven’t been used in decades to railway depots. Their team is adaptable, surveying some of the most prestigious structures out there. In the UK alone, they have surveyed the Lovell Telescope and the Shard, alongside the Crown Estate and Parliamentary estates.
The managers of the frozen food distribution site reached out to Plowman Craven to ask if they had an idea for how they could complete a rapid structural assessment. Within 48 hours of being contacted about the incident, a team from Plowman Craven arrived on site equipped with the Elios 3 drone. They knew that traditional access with scaffolding and MEWPs wouldn’t provide the rapid results needed in this scenario, and a drone inspection was the only way forward.
Plowman Craven’s experienced pilot team chose the Elios 3 as it has several key features that made it the best choice for this mission.
Firstly, the drone can operate in confined spaces thanks to its collision-tolerant cage and rugged design. This means it can easily fly between elements of the ceiling structure and gather all of the necessary data without anyone having to work at height or climb scaffolding.
Up close and personal: the 4K imagery from the Elios 3 delivered key information about the situation - and an explanation as to why the ceiling had failed
Secondly, the Elios 3 is easy to fly and deploy, which was vital for this rapid intervention where every second counted. It could be used to do a systematic inspection of the roof and hanger spaces, assessing the section that had broken and investigating if other areas could be in a similar state of disrepair.
Finally, the quality of data from the Elios 3 matched exactly what the Plowman Craven team needed. The 4K video and high-resolution images would empower detailed analysis and easy communication between the Plowman Craven team and the site managers when paired with the drone’s 3D models captured by its LiDAR sensor, streamlining the repair process and getting the site back to operational as soon as possible.
The Elios 3 gives you a side-by-side comparison with a LiDAR point cloud to show you where you are in the structure next to a 4K video or 12MP photo of the point of interest, so you can see exactly where a defect is and its severity
Soon after arriving on-site, the Plowman Craven pilots got to work. The first step was assessing the environment and determining the best data collection strategy. They had several challenges to contend with:
Many of these challenges were mitigated by the Elios 3’s adaptable and stable flight systems, along with the experience of the pilot team in operating BVLOS. The operational floor was fully closed, and although there was a desire to gather data as quickly as possible to mitigate ongoing stock losses, the team was cool under pressure.
After initial reconnaissance flights, the team systematically inspected all of the hanger systems for the ceiling across the facility. They checked the roofing around the collapsed area, assessing the damage and marking points of interest on the drone’s LiDAR scan that could be used to investigate what had caused the collapse. They then safely landed the drone and quickly moved to the data analysis phase to share their findings with the site managers.
The Elios 3 easily accessed the roofspace, showing the main structure to be intact and the insulated ceiling panels as the point of failure.
The Plowman Craven team and their Elios 3 delivered good news! The failure wasn’t caused by the main roof failing, but the suspended, insulated ceiling panels. This meant repair work would be a quicker, targeted process.
The cause of the collapse was identified through the high-resolution images by the Elios 3: corrosion on the hangers holding up the ceiling. The full assessment with the Elios 3 by the Plowman Craven team allowed the facility owner to check other areas for corrosion to avoid a repeat of the incident by catching damage early.
Thanks to targeted data collection instead of generic scans, Plowman Craven delivered evidence-based recommendations to the facility owners, with a clear dataset available for further analysis rather than high volumes of non-specific visual inspections.
Repair work and a remediation strategy for the damage were quickly planned and put in place, reducing the overall operational disruption and getting the facility one step closer to resuming standard work - and reducing the total stock loss!
Plowman Craven relied on their expertise and combined it with the Elios 3 to create a tailored inspection plan and structural assessment for this high-stakes mission. They localised defects using the Elios 3’s LiDAR point cloud, showing the area, height, and position of hanger systems needing attention and streamlining repair prioritization. The facility was able to quickly recover from this accident thanks to the efforts of the Plowman Craven team, and the overall project is a testament to the value of drone inspections in proactive, experience-driven structural assessments.
Interested in learning more about the Elios 3 for facility inspections? Head to our page about drones for infrastructure inspections!