A drone makes roof inspection safer and faster, and it produces a problem of its own: volume. A single flight over a school or a retail park can return several hundred images, every one of them sharp and most of them showing nothing wrong. The client did not commission the photographs. They commissioned a decision: what needs doing, how urgently and roughly where.
The report is where that decision lives, and most drone reports fail it in one of two ways. Either they are a photo dump with captions, in which the three genuinely urgent items are buried on pages 41, 58 and 112; or they are a short narrative with a few hero shots, in which the client cannot find the evidence for the figure they are about to approve. The structure below avoids both.
Start with the three questions
Every roof report should answer, on its first content page:
- What is red? The items that need action now, listed.
- Where is it? On the building, not in the image set.
- What should the client do? Action and timescale per item.
A RAG scheme does this well because clients already understand it. Red is act now, amber is plan it, green is noted. Put the counts on the cover, so the reader knows before opening the report whether this is a quiet year or an expensive one.
In Report Kit 360 the roof and facade RAG template does this by default: red, amber and green counters on the cover calculated from the markers, a RAG guide that explains the ratings in plain words, and a fault index at the back that lists every finding worst first.
Divide the roof before you divide the photos
The second failure of drone reports is location. An aerial photo of a parapet gutter does not tell a facilities manager which parapet gutter. Ground staff need a reference they can walk to.
Before marking up a single defect, divide the roof into sections and give each one a name the client already uses: Block A north slope, Block B flat roof, east elevation, plant deck. Place a sectioned overview image at the front of the report with those names on it. Every defect photo then belongs to a section, and every section gets a summary page with its own RAG counts.
The template supports that with a site overview, sectioned overview pages and section summaries. Assign each photo to its section as you upload and the structure takes care of itself.
Mark up fewer photos, better
Not every image needs to be in the report. The flight produces coverage; the report needs evidence. Choose the image that shows each defect best, and leave the rest in the media library in case anyone asks.
For each defect photo:
- Draw a marker round the defect. A rectangle, ellipse, polygon or point is enough on Basic; Pro adds arrows, freehand shapes and measurement markers.
- Give it a rating, a fault type and tags. The template seeds 14 fault groups and 19 tags; add your own and they are kept for the next report.
- Write a note in three parts: Defect (what you can see), Risk (what happens if it is left) and Recommendation (what to do). Keep each part to one sentence.
Fault numbers run in report order automatically and appear on the photo, in the table under it and in the index. If you insert a photo page later the numbering follows.
Write the section summaries, not a narrative
Clients rarely read narrative. They read summaries and tables, and they look at the pictures. A section summary should be a short paragraph plus the counts: this slope has two red items (slipped slates above the main entrance, blocked outlet at the north-east corner), four amber and the rest green. Then the recommendation for the section as a whole.
The counts come from the markers, so the summary cannot disagree with the photo pages. That consistency is what makes a report trustworthy: when the cover says three red and the index lists three red and each has a photo, the client stops checking and starts acting.
Keep the flight evidence, but keep it separate
The flight itself needs recording: who flew, under what category or operational authorisation, what the aircraft and sensor were, the weather and the limitations. It matters if the report is ever questioned, and it matters for your own records. It does not belong in the client’s first ten pages.
The roof and facade RAG template has an optional drone flight appendix for exactly this, and the drone survey template puts the compliance evidence and methodology in their own sections before the defect register. Whether the flight met the CAA’s requirements for your category or authorisation is your responsibility as the operator; the template records what you enter and the checks confirm the required fields are filled.
Issue a version the client can rely on
A drone roof report is often the basis for a tender or an insurance conversation. Two things help. First, issue the report rather than simply exporting it: Issue freezes a numbered version with its PDF and checksum, and the share page carries a Verify link showing the issued version’s fingerprint. Second, send a share link rather than an attachment, so everyone is looking at the same version and you can see when it was opened and whether the PDF was downloaded.
If the contractor needs the findings as data, Pro exports the findings schedule as CSV or XLSX. If the client’s own website should show the report, the Report Kit 360 Connect plugin for WordPress embeds a shared report in a frame.
Where thermal and measurement fit
Two additions make a roof report more useful and both are Pro features. The thermal block pairs an infrared image with its visible-light twin, with a palette legend, spot temperatures and the ΔT, which is the honest way to present a suspected wet area under a membrane. Measurement markers record a dimension on the photo, so an area of ponding or a length of failed flashing can be quantified for the tender.
On Basic a thermal image can still be placed as a plain image with a caption; it is the readings and the pairing that need Pro.
A short template for the first page
If you take nothing else from this post, take the first page:
- Site, client, date, access method and weather.
- Three counters: red, amber, green.
- The red items, each with section, one-line description, photo number and recommended action.
- One sentence on overall condition.
- One sentence on what the client should do this month.
Everything after that is evidence. Well organised evidence, but evidence. The first page is the report.
Report Kit 360 is a trading name of [Digital Depth Studio Ltd]. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by the CAA or any professional body. The roof and facade RAG and drone survey templates are on the Basic plan from £14.99 a month; the thermal block and measurement markers are on Pro.
