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Beyond the Pilot’s License: Closing the Competency Gap in Drone-Based Industrial Inspection

Executive Summary

Many industrial facilities are embracing drones for inspections. But this has led to a problem: drone pilots are often collecting critical inspection data without certified inspection expertise.

This competency gap is driven by rapid advances in drone technology. For example, it is now possible to collect ultrasonic thickness (UT) data by drone with relative ease. And yet, according to API, ASNT, and other standards, qualified NDT personnel must ensure UT data is collected and interpreted correctly.

The consequences are real: inaccurate data, missed or misjudged defects, and non-compliance with safety and mechanical integrity codes.

The solution? Every drone inspection program needs two distinct but complementary competencies:

Professional drone pilot—provides platform and piloting expertise, ensuring
high-quality, consistent data capture.
Professional inspector—provides asset and code expertise, defining and guiding
data collection and ensuring accurate defect evaluation and compliant inspections.

These two skillsets can exist in a single dual-qualified person or across a team of pilots and certified inspectors. What matters is that both competencies are present for any drone inspection that informs integrity decisions.

The Emerging Competency Gap in Drone-Based Inspections

A decade ago, using drones for advanced NDT would have seemed farfetched. The technology was just not good enough to do the nuanced data collection industrial inspectors need.

Today, drones are incredibly sophisticated—and this is especially true for inspection drones. Organizations across heavy industries now use drones for a range of inspection tasks, from visual and thermal assessments to more advanced NDT data collection, including UT, PEC, EMAT, and more.

But the rapid adoption of drones for inspections has left a competency gap: skilled drone pilots are excellent at flying and collecting NDT data, but without training by recognized standards bodies like ASNT or API, they may not have the skills needed to collect that data correctly.

Flying and inspecting are two distinct competencies, and it is important to clearly define them:

Operating the drone and its sensors demands precise flight control, knowledge of the specific platform and its payloads, and the ability to capture consistent, high-quality data.
Inspecting the asset requires certified inspection expertise, familiarity with the asset and applicable industry standards, and the ability to guide data capture and interpretation.

→ Real world example: For bridge inspections, NBIS requires that a certified bridge inspector be involved in all phases of the inspection, regardless of the tools or access methods used. Drone imagery alone does not satisfy these requirements without certified oversight.

The Risks of Relying on Drone Pilots Alone

Relying solely on drone pilots for industrial inspections creates a fundamental gap. Data may be captured, but the inspection lacks the certified expertise required to ensure the right data is collected, interpreted correctly, and evaluated against industry codes.

This gap can lead to inaccurate or incomplete information, missed or misjudged defects, and inspection outputs that do not support safe or defensible decisions—all technical failures that cascade into three major categories of risk.

1. Safety Risks

Without oversight by a certified inspector, early indicators such as subtle thermal anomalies, localized corrosion, or small leaks may be overlooked or misinterpreted. These gaps can allow preventable defects to progress into equipment failures, loss of containment, or other events that place workers and surrounding communities at risk.

2. Financial Risks

In many cases, bad inspection data—incorrect, incomplete, or misleading—is worse than no data at all, because it can trigger unnecessary work or emergency outages while still failing to identify real threats. Organizations may invest in an initial round of drone inspections only to discover that the results are incomplete or unusable, forcing them to pay for a second inspection performed under the supervision of qualified personnel.

3. Compliance and Legal Risks

As with any mandated inspection, drone-based inspections that inform integrity decisions must meet applicable codes and standards. When uncertified personnel—drone pilots or otherwise—perform data collection or interpret inspections, the findings may be technically invalid. This lack of compliance leaves gaps in documentation, exposing organizations to regulatory scrutiny, insurance challenges, and liability if an incident occurs.

→ Real world example: For piping inspections under API 570, thickness measurements and visual assessments must be evaluated by a certified API 570 inspector. A drone flight can collect images or UT readings, but without certified oversight to define coverage and interpret results, the inspection does not meet the requirements for mechanical integrity evaluation.

Who Does What: The Importance of Dual Competencies

We have established that drone inspection programs should rely on two core competencies: drone flight and sensor operation, and inspection and code expertise.

These competencies can live in a single person or be shared by a drone pilot and one or more certified inspectors, but both must be present on every industrial inspection.

In practice, organizations typically combine these competencies in one of three ways:

Dual-qualified pilot-inspector: one person holds both flight and inspection credentials.
Pilot + on-site inspector: a licensed pilot flies while a certified inspector directs coverage and evaluates results.
Pilot + remote inspector: a pilot captures data in the field while a certified inspector oversees and interprets it remotely.

This chart shows how the two competencies break down functionally. In practice, a dual-qualified person may cover both columns, or a pilot and inspector may share them across the team, as covered in the list of options above.

Aspect	Drone Flight & Sensor Operation Competency	Inspection & Code Competency
Primary focus	Safe aircraft control and sensor operation	Asset condition, defect evaluation, compliance with industry codes and standards; definition of required coverage and data quality
Key responsibilities	Plan and fly routes within airspace and site constraints; maintain separation; capture images and sensor data	Specify what must be imaged or measured; recognize and size defects; assess trends; determine severity and required actions
Typical tools / outputs	Flight controls, navigation displays, camera interfaces, raw images and logs	Inspection procedures, acceptance criteria, annotated indications, formal inspection reports
Risk if competency is missing	Incomplete or low-quality data; near-miss events; flight safety issues	Missed or misinterpreted defects, insufficient coverage, unsound integrity decisions, and gaps in compliance documentation

Why These Two Competencies Matter in Real Inspections

These dual competencies matter most when inspections move beyond simple visual checks into specialized methods with stricter data and code requirements.

Different methods, assets, and data types all place different demands on how the drone is flown, how data is collected, and how the results are evaluated.

Consider these different data collection methods:

Visual inspections. A pilot can capture sharp, high-resolution images, but only a certified inspector can determine whether visual indications—such as corrosion, coating breakdown, or surface deformation—exceed allowable limits.
Thermal inspections. The operator must understand emissivity and how a material emits thermal radiation. If emissivity settings are incorrect or flights occur at the wrong time of day, thermal images can show false hot spots or wash out real anomalies.
Optical gas imaging (OGI). Leak detectability depends on Delta T—the temperature difference between the gas plume and the background. If Delta T is too small, a significant leak may be effectively invisible even when the camera settings and flight path appear correct.
Ultrasonic thickness (UT) inspections. A pilot can position the drone and collect thickness readings, but only a certified inspector or dual-qualified pilot-inspector can evaluate wall-loss patterns, assess remaining thickness against code requirements in standards such as API 510, API 570, or API 653, and determine the severity of corrosion or erosion.

Because each of these methods has its own procedures and acceptance criteria, certified inspectors with credentials in non-destructive testing or relevant codes—for example, ASNT-based Level II or Level III qualifications or API programs—must define what “good enough” data looks like and ultimately determine compliance, severity, and the appropriate response.

→ Real world example: For storage tank inspections, API 653 requires that storage tanks undergo external inspections every five years and ultrasonic thickness measurements at intervals not exceeding fifteen years. These inspections must be planned and evaluated by a certified API 653 inspector, underscoring why UT data collected by drone still requires qualified oversight.

Recommendations for Asset Owners and Drone Service Providers

The implications of this competency gap are different for asset owners who pay for inspection services and for drone services providers who actually do the inspections.

But the underlying mandate is the same: to align drone capability with certified inspection expertise on every industrial job.

For asset owners, the priority is to make certified inspection credentials a non-negotiable part of any drone-based inspection that informs integrity decisions:

Require relevant inspector certifications (for example, API certifications and ASNT-based NDT qualifications) in scopes of work and contracts for drone inspections.
Update internal procedures and mechanical integrity programs to state that certified inspectors must define data requirements, plan missions, oversee data capture, and interpret results.
Vet vendors not only for aircraft, sensors, and flight experience, but also for the inspection credentials and track record of the personnel who will sign off on findings.

For drone service providers, the priority is to move beyond a “pilot only” model for industrial work and ensure that certified inspection expertise is built into every applicable project:

Treat a remote pilot certificate as necessary but not sufficient for industrial inspections.
Invest in inspection certifications, add certified inspectors to project teams, or form partnerships with qualified NDT and code specialists. In some cases, this investment may include cross-training pilots in NDT methods or supporting inspectors in obtaining drone pilot credentials.
Make the presence of certified inspection expertise a visible part of the offering, positioning services as lower-risk and more defensible for industrial clients.