How HOCHTIEF surveys the A1 Rhine Bridge every week, flown from 1,000 miles away

HOCHTIEF is rebuilding the A1 Rhine Bridge in Leverkusen, one of Germany's most important pieces of infrastructure, on a site with thousands of interlocking tasks and a 2028 deadline. 

To watch progress without pulling a pilot to site every week, HOCHTIEF worked with drone services partner Skyports and standardized on DroneDeploy for reality capture. 

A DJI Dock 2 lives on the bridge for the duration of the build. Once a week a Skyports pilot in Madrid, roughly 1,000 miles away, oversees a fully automated survey of the whole site, and the data lands in DroneDeploy as 2D maps, topographical maps and 3D models the team uses to track the build.

The challenge:

The A1 Rhine Bridge is a central artery for German transport, and its replacement runs to 2028. A site that large moves on thousands of individual tasks that all have to line up, which is exactly where a regular survey earns its keep: it catches problems while they are still cheap to fix.

HOCHTIEF had flown drone surveys before, but always with a pilot physically on site. That put the survey at the mercy of pilot scheduling, and visual-line-of-sight rules capped how much of the bridge one flight could cover. On a structure this size, partial coverage on an unpredictable cadence is not enough to manage the work.

The solution:

Working with Skyports, HOCHTIEF put a DJI Dock 2 on the bridge permanently and moved the flying off site entirely. DroneDeploy processes what the drone brings back.

• A docked drone on a weekly cadence runs a fully automated BVLOS survey of the entire construction site, no pilot travel required.
• Remote piloting from Madrid lets a Skyports operator about 1,000 miles away oversee each flight, so coverage no longer depends on who is free to be on site.
• Reality capture in DroneDeploy turns each survey into 2D and topographical maps and 3D models, held in one place the whole team can reference.

The result is a current picture of the bridge every week, captured the same way each time, without anyone driving to Leverkusen to get it.

"The service has provided seamless and cost-effective monitoring of the progress of our site. Collecting data with drones will be a key factor in improving efficiency, accuracy, and decision-making on our HOCHTIEF construction sites."

• Philip Schulze, Project Manager, HOCHTIEF

The results

With a fresh survey in hand each week, HOCHTIEF can track how the site changes over time, compare design against as-built, and check quality against a record instead of a memory. That shared reference tightens site documentation and communication across the project.

The payoff shows up in the work that no longer has to happen:

• Fewer in-person inspections, and the travel time they carry
• Earlier catches that reduce the risk of expensive rework
• Full-site coverage on a predictable weekly cadence, not partial coverage when a pilot is available

Because the flying is remote and automated, the surveys are cheaper to run than sending a pilot to site, and they can start the moment the dock is in place.

Watch the full story: 

The future

Philip Schulze frames drone data as "a key factor" across HOCHTIEF's construction sites, not a one-bridge experiment. The A1 Rhine Bridge is the proof: a permanent dock, a weekly automated survey, and a single reality capture record that any team can open. It is a repeatable model for monitoring large, complex builds, and one HOCHTIEF can carry from this bridge to the next site.

About HOCHTIEF

“HOCHTIEF is an engineering-led global infrastructure solutions provider with leading positions in North America, Australia and Europe. Headquartered in Essen, Germany, and majority-owned by Spain's ACS Group, the company employs roughly 62,000 people and builds across construction, infrastructure services, and public-private partnerships, with a growing focus on high-tech facilities like data centers, energy transition, and sustainable infrastructure. Its work spans buildings, bridges, tunnels, and civil engineering through subsidiaries that include Flatiron, Turner, CIMIC and Leighton Asia.

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