Home » Updates » University of Michigan Unveils New Elbel Field: A Cutting-Edge Home for the Michigan Marching Band
University of Michigan Unveils New Elbel Field: A Cutting-Edge Home for the Michigan Marching Band
The University of Michigan’s new Elbel Field is a state-of-the-art facility designed primarily for the Michigan Marching Band. Relocated on South Fifth Avenue, the revamped field offers a vastly improved practice environment, nearly doubling the size of the former field and incorporating cutting-edge technology to enhance the band’s rehearsals. This $15.4 million project, funded by university reserves, includes a main field aligned with Michigan Stadium, a secondary practice area, and several modern amenities like sound amplification, overhead cameras, and even a large video board.
The new Elbel Field maintains its name in honor of Louis Elbel, the composer of the University of Michigan’s fight song, “The Victors.” It also features 18 water bottle stations, shaded areas for hot weather, and Wi-Fi, marking a significant upgrade from the previous setup. The new facility connects to the band’s indoor practice space at Revelli Hall via a tree-lined walkway called ‘Wolverine Way’, integrating the entire practice area.
This project is part of a broader initiative that includes transforming the original Elbel Field into a 2,300-bed residence hall, expanding affordable student housing options on campus.
The new Elbel Field highlights UofM’s commitment to supporting its iconic marching band and providing top-tier facilities for student musicians while also addressing the need for more student housing in the area.
Monitoring a construction site with up-to-date drone photos and videos is a powerful tool that provides numerous advantages for site managers and stakeholders. Drone technology can enhance safety, increase efficiency, provide accurate documentation, improve communication, and reduce costs.
Improved Safety: Drones can capture high-quality images and videos of the site from different angles and heights, allowing site managers to identify potential safety hazards and take corrective action before any accidents occur.
Increased Efficiency: Drones can quickly and easily capture data on the progress of the site, allowing managers to track the project’s progress in real-time. This information can be used to identify delays and bottlenecks, enabling managers to adjust schedules and resources accordingly.
Accurate Documentation: Drone photos and videos provide accurate and up-to-date documentation of the site, allowing managers to easily identify changes, track progress, and maintain accurate records.
Better Communication: Drone photos and videos can be shared with stakeholders and team members, providing a clear and detailed view of the site’s progress and status. This improves communication and collaboration, ensuring that everyone is on the same page.
Cost-Effective: Drones are a cost-effective alternative to traditional methods of site monitoring, such as manual inspections or helicopter flyovers. They require less time and resources to capture high-quality data, providing significant cost savings over time.
Stockpile Measurements
Our stockpile measurements, analytics, and cut-fill analysis capabilities are a game changer. Drone Brothers can help you streamline surveying, estimating and reporting. Combined with our advanced digital platform, we can provide you with the data you need to accurately measure earth-moving needed to reach finished grade. Helping you win bids, keep projects on schedule, and the entire project team updated on progress.Here are a few key ways that Drone Brothers can help your project with stockpile management.
Accurate volumetric measurements: Drones can be equipped with sensors that allow them to capture high-resolution imagery and data that can be used to create accurate 3D models of stockpiles. This allows for precise volumetric measurements, which can help to ensure that inventory levels are accurate and up-to-date.
Efficient inventory tracking: Drones can be used to collect data on a regular basis, providing up-to-date information on the status of stockpiles. This can help construction teams to track inventory levels more efficiently and to ensure that they have the materials they need on hand when they need them.
Improved safety: By using drones, construction teams can avoid the need for manual measurement and monitoring, which can be hazardous and time-consuming. This can help to reduce the risk of accidents and injuries on site.
Cost savings: By providing accurate and up-to-date information on stockpile levels, drones can help construction teams to avoid overstocking or under-stocking, which can result in cost savings. This can also help to reduce waste and ensure that materials are used efficiently.
Overall, the use of drones for stockpile management can help construction teams to monitor inventory levels more efficiently, accurately, and safely. By providing up-to-date information on stockpiles, drones can help to ensure that construction projects stay on track and on budget.
The real cost to you is immeasurable when money is lost on inaccurate and inefficient inventory tracking.
Legal Documentation
If you haven’t considered the relevance of legal documentation of site condition and development progress, this might be beneficial to know. Drones can play a significant role and make your job easier by mitigating and even eliminating any future legal issues through the following avenues:
Site inspection: Drones can be used to perform aerial inspections, providing high-resolution imagery and videos. This can help to document the conditions site at various stages of construction, including prior to beginning a project, providing important evidence for legal purposes.
Progress tracking: Drones can also be used to track the progress of projects over time. By capturing regular aerial images and video of the site, construction teams can document the progress of the project and ensure that it is on track according to the original timeline and budget.
Dispute resolution: In the event of a legal dispute, imagery and video can be used as evidence in court. For example, if there is a disagreement about the condition of the site or the progress of the project, drone footage can provide a clear and objective record of the situation, eliminating any potential ambiguity and questions raised. Just imagine all the potential hundreds of thousands. or even millions of dollars you will save in legal costs, not to mention precious time and resources, should they ever become an issue.
Compliance monitoring: Drones can also be used to monitor compliance with regulations such as environmental and state/county, and safety standards. For example, they can be used to detect potential hazards or safety violations, providing important documentation for legal purposes. In addition to helping you avoid financial downsides of arbitration, drones can help you maintain your good reputation by ensuring that you also sidestep unfortunate accidents causing bodily injury or worse.
Advantages of drones over surveyors with regard to legal dispute mitigation
Faster data collection: Unlike surveyors who are at the mercy of terrain issues like muddy or uneven surfaces, weather, possible scheduling conflicts, time constraints and other factors that affect humans, drones can capture data over large areas of the construction site in a relatively short amount of time, providing a quick and efficient way to collect data. This cannot only save time and reduce costs, but can possibly help avoid liability issues the minute any problems are detected, rather than down the road where it might be very costly to address in a lawsuit.
Increased accuracy: Surveyors are only human and are prone to mistakes and oversights, while drones can capture highly accurate data, providing precise measurements and detailed images. This can be especially useful for legal documentation purposes, as it can help to ensure that the documentation is accurate and reliable.
Safer data collection: Drones can capture data from hazardous or hard-to-reach areas of the construction site without putting surveyors at risk. This can help to ensure that the data is collected safely and without the risk of injury to workers, taking any potential liability off of you. And if, in the unfortunate event an accident does occur, drones can help legal teams analyze and reconstruct scenes. Avoiding any and all potential liability is a huge plus, which is why we can appreciate your attention to it as priority one.
More frequent data collection: Drones can be used to collect data on a regular basis, providing up-to-date information on the construction site. This can be useful for legal documentation purposes, as it can help to ensure that the documentation is current and reflects the latest information about the construction site.
Overall, drones can help ensure transparency, accuracy, and compliance with regulations with respect to construction projects. By providing high-quality imagery and videos, they can play an important role in avoiding and resolving legal disputes and ensuring that projects are completed on time, on budget, and to the required standards. This is a win-win for all, and especially peace of mind in the one aspect of construction that allows you the most amount of control.
Site Selection
Site selection in the construction process is crucial. Mistakes or oversights can have a ripple effect in many ways. Aerial assets from Drone Brothers can get you off to a good start. Rather than looking at outdated Google Maps, drone pilots are able to fly a prospective site without you having to leave the office while still getting a detailed, up-to-date view of the property your considering for your next job site. Here are a few of the advantages of having Drone Brothers fly your site before beginning a project.
Higher resolution imagery: Drones can capture high-resolution imagery of potential construction sites, providing more detailed information about the site’s topography, vegetation, and other features that can impact the construction process. Google Maps imagery may not be as up-to-date or detailed. One can see the vast potential in showing a high resolution image. No eye squinting or ambiguity here.
Real-time data: Drones can capture real-time data, providing construction teams with up-to-date information about the site. Google Maps imagery may be several months or even years old, and may not reflect recent changes to the site. Try to imagine your embarrassment when a developer or investor realizes that the images you’re showing them have been drastically changed since or even before the onset of their plans, forcing them to rethink their investment of precious time and money.
3D modeling: Drone mapping can create 3D models of construction sites, providing more detailed information about the site’s elevation, slope, and other features. Google Maps does not offer 3D modeling.
Customized data: Drones can capture customized data based on the specific needs of the construction project, such as soil quality or the location of underground utilities. Google Maps provides general data that may not be tailored to the specific needs of a construction project.
Safety: Unlike Google Maps which can’t accurately assess the safety of an area, whether due to environmental factors such as uneven surfaces, or hazardous conditions from recent inclement weather, Drone Brothers mapping analytics can get the job done and assure you that you won’t be putting anyone on your team in harm’s way with a poorly selected site.
