The Roof Nobody Can Reach, Photographed for the People Deciding
Most people meet aerial imagery in an insurance context at the worst possible moment: something has happened to a roof, a claim is open, and everybody involved needs to know what is up there before anybody can safely go and look. The loss adjuster cannot reasonably climb a covering that has just failed. The policyholder wants an independent record before a temporary repair covers the evidence. The broker, if the building is large, is already thinking about what the renewal conversation is going to need.
Each of those people wants the same thing and none of them wants a sales pitch about drones. They want photographs that show the extent of what has happened, that can be placed on the building and dated, and that will still stand up when somebody who was never on site reads them months later. That is a narrower and more useful question than whether a drone can reach a roof, which it plainly can.
This piece is about that narrower question. It sets out who in the insurance chain actually commissions aerial imagery and why, what the images end up being used for, and what makes a set of them acceptable to an audience whose job is to be sceptical. Drone Media Imaging supplies the imagery and a plain account of what it shows. It never decides the claim, and it is worth being clear about that before going any further.
Blog Content TL;DR...
Who commissions aerial imagery in an insurance context, what it is used for, and what makes it acceptable.
- Three people commission it: a loss adjuster or risk surveyor who cannot reach the roof, a broker placing or renewing cover on a large roof, and a policyholder who wants an independent dated record.
- It is used to show extent, to separate storm damage from what was already there, and to give an underwriter a picture of an estate at renewal.
- Acceptable means dated, placed, systematic and unaltered, with any marked-up copy sitting beside the untouched original.
- A plain written account of what was observed goes with the images, with each observation located on the building.
- It is imagery and observation, never adjudication. No opinion on cause, cost, liability or whether a claim is valid, and no building survey or condition grading implied.
A record that argues for one side has stopped being a record.
Who Commissions It, and Why They Pick Up the Phone
Three people, three reasons, one set of photographs
Aerial imagery reaches an insurance file by three routes, and it is worth knowing which one you are on, because it changes what the job needs to cover.
The adjuster or surveyor who cannot get to the roof
A loss adjuster attending a storm claim has the same problem a roofer does: the part of the building in question is the part that is now least safe to stand on. Scaffold or a tower takes days to arrange and adds cost to a claim before anyone has established what the claim is. Imagery captured from the air, on the day the adjuster attends or shortly before, lets the visit go ahead and lets the file move. The same applies to the risk surveyor sent by an insurer or broker to look at a large commercial roof they cannot walk, where the question is not damage but what is up there at all.
The broker, and the policyholder who wants their own record
On a large or complex roof, a broker placing or renewing cover may want a current, dated picture of the roof rather than a description written from the ground. A set of images at renewal, repeated the following year, is a modest exercise set against what the cover is protecting, and is often the first time anybody has seen the whole roof. The policyholder’s reason is different again. After an event they want an independent record made before a temporary repair goes on, because the repair covers up exactly what it was covering. Before an event, a building owner with a roof they cannot see may simply want a dated baseline on file, so that if a claim ever arises the question of what was already there is answered by a photograph and not by memory.
aerial photographs for a loss adjuster, independent roof record for an insurance claim, roof condition record at insurance renewalaerial photographs for a loss adjuster, independent roof record for an insurance claim, roof condition record at insurance renewal
What the Imagery Gets Used For
Once the images exist they do three jobs, and each one asks something different of how they were taken.
Extent, and what was already there
The first job is establishing the extent of a loss: how much of the roof is affected, which slopes, which details, and whether the visible damage on one elevation has a counterpart on the one nobody looked at. The second is harder and is where the difficult questions live. Storm damage sits on top of whatever the roof was like before the storm, and a claim frequently turns on separating one from the other. Imagery that covers the whole roof, not only the hole, is what makes that separation possible, because it shows the undamaged courses and the historic repairs alongside the new failure. What to record in the days after a storm is covered in its own piece; the point here is that the adjuster is going to ask that question, and a set of images that photographed only the damage cannot answer it.
The estate record at renewal
The third job has nothing to do with an event. A portfolio of buildings, a large industrial roof or an estate with plant and rooflights across it is difficult for an underwriter to picture and hard for a broker to describe convincingly. A systematic set of images at renewal, slope by slope and dated, turns that description into something a person can look at, and repeating it the following year turns it into a comparison. None of that is a condition grading or a building survey. It is a record of what was visible on a given date, and it is useful precisely because it makes no claim beyond that.
What Makes It Acceptable to a Sceptical Reader
An adjuster, an underwriter or a solicitor reading a set of images has a professional duty to doubt them. The imagery has to survive that, and five things decide whether it does.
Dated, placed, systematic and unaltered
Each frame needs to carry when it was taken and where, which the aircraft records as it flies, so the date is not a claim made afterwards but a property of the file. Coverage needs to be systematic, every slope and every elevation in a known order, so that a gap in the set reads as a gap in the roof rather than a gap in the record. And the originals need to stay as captured. Where an observation is marked up, the marked copy sits beside the untouched original, so that anyone who wants to check what was drawn on can look at what was underneath. What makes a photograph work as a record later, rather than look good now, is a subject of its own and is covered separately.
A plain account, and a plain boundary
The fifth thing is a written summary that says what was observed and locates each observation on the building. It records what is visible. It does not say what caused it, what it will cost, whether the policy responds or whether the claim is valid, because those are matters for the adjuster, the insurer and the policyholder, and a photographer offering an opinion on them would only weaken the record. Anything found is reported as an area warranting further investigation by a suitably qualified contractor. That boundary is not a limitation of the service. It is the reason the imagery can be relied on, because a record that argues for one side has stopped being a record.
Governing Standards and Scope
- This is a visual inspection service. Drone Media Imaging photographs what is visible and describes what the photographs show. No building survey, structural assessment, condition grading, valuation or professional opinion on the condition of a roof or structure is offered or implied, and no surveying qualification is held or claimed.
- Findings are reported as observations warranting further investigation by a suitably qualified contractor or surveyor.
- Drone Media Imaging holds no insurance-industry accreditation or membership and offers no opinion on the cause of damage, liability, policy response or the validity of any claim. Imagery and observations are supplied to whoever commissions them; how they are assessed is a matter for the adjuster, the insurer and the policyholder.
- Flight operations are conducted under a Civil Aviation Authority Operational Authorisation, with a General VLOS Certificate (GVC) and an A2 Certificate of Competency, and are fully insured for commercial operation.
- Drone Media Imaging carries out no roofing, repair or maintenance work of any kind, and has no commercial interest in what an inspection does or does not find.
Tell Us Who Needs the Images and What They Are For
Whether you are an adjuster who needs a roof looked at before a visit, a broker with a large roof to place, or a policyholder who wants an independent record before a repair goes on, tell us the address, who the images are for and what has prompted it. We will say plainly what we would cover, when a workable window is likely, and what you will receive.
Sussex, Hampshire, Kent and Surrey are home ground, with travel throughout the UK, Ireland and Europe where a job warrants it. If it is not worth doing, we will say so.
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