a construction company reached out, they found me through instagram somehow, and they want regular site progress shots ? like weekly or bi-weekly flyovers of an active build site. sounds amazing on paper but i have no idea what to charge for something ongoing like that and also i looked up the site on Google Maps and theres a class D shelf that might clip the area depending on exact positioning. so theres a couple things stressing me out here.

the airspace thing i think i can handle with LAANC but its more the pricing and the contract stuff im unsure about. do i give them a monthly rate? per visit? do i lock in a rate for the whole project which could be like 8 months? what if fuel and time costs eat into it more than i expected. also should i be asking them to sign anything before i even go out for a site visit or quote or is that weird at the early stage

sorry if this is kind of scattered, just processing out loud a bit

construction clients are great if you can land a good one, they tend to be pretty loyal once you're embedded in their workflow. for pricing on ongoing stuff like this i'd think about it as a monthly retainer rather than per visit ? makes the invoicing cleaner and gives you some predictability. rough ballpark for weekly visits in my market (southeast, mid-size city) is somewhere in the $600-900/month range depending on deliverables. if they want processed orthomosaics or progress reports on top of just the footage then obviously that changes things considerably.

on the contract question ? yes absolutely get something in writing before you do anything. doesnt have to be super lawyerly but it should cover frequency of visits, what you're delivering and in what format, payment terms, and importantly who owns the footage. i've had clients try to share my raw files with third parties without asking, having it spelled out avoids that headache. you can find decent drone service agreement templates online and just adapt them, thats what i did starting out.

the class D thing ? yeah just get your LAANC auth sorted before you go, most of the time its instant approval for construction sites that arent right in the approach path. double check the actual coordinates of the work area not just the general address.

honestly the airspace stuff is the easy part lol, LAANC has made that pretty painless compared to what it used to be. the business side is where people really trip up. one thing i'd add ? find out who at the construction company is actually your contact and decision maker before you spend too much time quoting. sometimes you get a site manager who's excited but the actual person who approves invoices is someone else entirely and they have different expectations. found that out the annoying way on a job last year