Confined Space Inspections

Tanks, vessels, silos, stacks, and sewers don’t have to be entered by people to be inspected. A caged, collision-tolerant drone with onboard lighting flies the interior while your crew watches the video feed from outside the manway. No scaffolding. No rope access. No permit-required confined-space entry for the inspection itself.

What you get out of one interior flight

• Annotated walkthrough video of the run, with location markers as the drone moves through the space.
• Defect imagery frame-by-frame: corrosion, weld discontinuities, coating failures, debris, animal intrusion, structural anomalies.
• Interior diagram with location markers tying each defect to a position on the developed interior or a 3D model of the vessel.
• Optional interior LiDAR point cloud for thickness-mapping or volume work where the platform supports it.
• PDF inspection report formatted for review by your integrity engineer or Authorized Inspector.

Honest scope: what these drones do and don’t cover

The caged inspection drones we operate are designed for visual interior survey and are not ATEX or intrinsically-safe certified. They fly inside spaces that have been cleaned, inerted, ventilated, and atmospherically tested to non-hazardous conditions. If your vessel is in operation, hot, or holds a flammable atmosphere, the inspection requires a separately scoped engagement on a certified intrinsically-safe platform: not the standard offering. We’ll tell you that upfront on the scoping call.

OSHA framing: the drone reduces entry, not the standard

OSHA 29 CFR 1910.146 (general industry) and 1926 Subpart AA (construction) govern the space, not the inspection method. A drone-based interior survey eliminates or sharply reduces the manned entry, but it doesn’t remove your obligation to identify the space, control hazards, and document the program. We work within whatever permit-required confined-space procedure your safety team runs; we don’t replace it.

Who buys this

Oil & gas operators, chemical and petrochemical plants, power generation facilities, water and wastewater utilities, marine vessel operators, grain and bulk-storage operators, and mining. Each industry’s acceptance criteria differ: pipeline operators care about API 653 alignment, water utilities want NSF-certified workflows on potable storage, etc. We scope per asset to whatever your integrity program requires.

How it’s priced

• Per-asset (per tank, vessel, silo, or stack) for the inspection itself
• Day-rate floor for mobilization to remote sites
• Cleaning, atmospheric testing, and isolation are your scope and budget: we coordinate with whoever you have running that work