Capabilities
NDAA-compliant drone survey in the USVI, and the file behind it.
Written for the person who has to justify the award. Compliant aircraft, a licensed surveyor of record signing the deliverables, operations under a written UAS flight SOP for this territory, and a proposal that states what it will do before you sign it.
Compliance
Why a cheaper bid can be ineligible.
If you already know what NDAA compliance means, skip ahead. If you are evaluating bids and the term has only ever appeared as a line on somebody’s capability sheet, this is the section that matters.
Federal money arrives with procurement conditions attached to it. Among those conditions are restrictions on unmanned aircraft manufactured by, or built with critical components from, a set of covered foreign entities. The restrictions began in defence procurement and have since been extended across federal agencies and, through funding conditions, into work paid for with federal dollars.
The consequence for a bid evaluation is blunt. This is not a scoring criterion where a strong showing elsewhere compensates. It is a threshold question about the equipment: either the aircraft is eligible for the work or it is not, and no price cures the second answer. A great deal of the drone hardware in general circulation — including much of what a low bid is likely to be flown on — falls on the wrong side of it.
Blue UAS is the Defense Innovation Unit’s list of platforms vetted against those requirements. It is the shortest defensible answer to “prove the aircraft is compliant”, because it is a published list maintained by the department that set the standard rather than a claim made by the vendor being evaluated.
DSS flies NDAA-compliant, Blue UAS listed aircraft. In a territory where a large share of the capital moving through construction is federal, that is not a badge on a brochure. It is the reason a file can be closed without a waiver conversation.
We do not name competitors or their equipment anywhere on this site. The question is whether the aircraft your project is flown on is eligible, which is a matter of record rather than opinion, and it is a fair question to put to every bidder including us.
Four questions that settle it
- What is the aircraft?
- Make and model, not “survey-grade UAV”. Eligibility attaches to the airframe
- Is it on the Blue UAS list?
- A published list, checkable without taking the bidder’s word for it
- Will that aircraft fly this job?
- A compliant aircraft in the fleet is not the same as the one that shows up
- What happens if it changes?
- Substitution mid-contract is where an eligible bid quietly stops being one
Put them to us as well. Our answer is the Skydio X10, on the list, and it is the aircraft that flies the work.
Licensure and oversight
Where a survey stops being drone output.
Anyone with a Part 107 certificate can produce a point cloud. What a reviewing agency needs is a deliverable somebody licensed has reviewed and put their name to.
- USVI-licensed surveyor of record. Survey deliverables are reviewed and signed. The licence is territorial, which matters: a mainland licence is not a substitute here.
- Engineering input arranged on scope. Where a deliverable will be designed against rather than filed — a surface carrying a grading model, an as-built carrying a retrofit — professional engineering review is arranged as part of that scope and priced in the proposal.
- Review, not rubber-stamping. The signature follows the QC step, not the processing step. That ordering is the entire value of it.
- Accuracy reported, not asserted. Every survey deliverable ships with the check point residuals, so the reviewer accepts it on evidence.
How the oversight works
- What is reviewed
- The control, the check point residuals, and the deliverable measured against them
- What is signed
- Survey deliverables, by a USVI-licensed surveyor of record
- What is not
- Progress documentation and visual records. Dated and complete, but not survey products, and we do not present them as such
- Engineering input
- Arranged on scope where a deliverable will be designed against rather than filed
- At proposal stage
- The individual signing your deliverables is identified by name, licence and jurisdiction
- Principal
- Jerson Batista, President and Managing Member
Operations
Flown to a written procedure.
Every flight is conducted under FAA Part 107. Airspace authorization is obtained before a crew mobilizes rather than pursued on the day, which on this territory is a live constraint rather than a formality: Cyril E. King on St. Thomas and Henry E. Rohlsen on St. Croix both carry controlled surface areas that sit over a meaningful share of the developed ground. The island pages set out what that means locally — St. Thomas, St. Croix, and St. John, where the binding constraint is the ground rather than the airspace.
Operations run under a written UAS standard operating procedure maintained for this territory. It exists, it is followed, and it is available for review where a client or an agency asks to see it. We are not going to summarise its contents on a marketing page; a procedure paraphrased in sales copy is worth less than the document.
Equipment
What the work is done with.
Owned and operated, not hired in per job.
| Category | What | Used for |
|---|---|---|
| Aircraft | Skydio X10, RTK | NDAA-compliant, Blue UAS listed aerial capture with an RTK-corrected position on every exposure |
| GNSS | Trimble rovers | Ground control and independent check points, set on the project coordinate system |
| Scanning total station | Trimble SX12 | Terrestrial scanning that measures and surveys from one setup, so the cloud lands on project control |
| Robotic total station | Trimble S7 | Control where canopy or multipath makes GNSS unreliable, and construction layout |
| Survey and design software | Civil 3D | Surfaces, volumes, corridors, and DWG or LandXML deliverables |
| BIM software | Revit | As-built modelling at a stated LOD, and deviation against a design model |
| Photogrammetry | Processing workstations | Orthomosaics, DSM and DTM surfaces, and registered point clouds |
Coordinate systems and datums
Put this in the solicitation.
Most disputes about a delivered surface are not disputes about accuracy. They are disputes about what the numbers were referenced to, discovered after the fact, when re-projecting is the only remedy left and every re-projection is a chance to introduce a quiet error.
The fix costs nothing at procurement stage: specify the frame in the request. Four lines in a solicitation remove the entire category of problem, and any competent bidder can answer them. What the products themselves look like is covered under aerial mapping.
What to ask every bidder for
- Horizontal datum and projection
- Territory work commonly NAD83 / PR & VI State Plane, EPSG:32161
- Vertical datum
- VIVD09 where the project does not specify its own
- Units
- US survey feet
- Accuracy, and how verified
- A figure is worth little without the check point comparison behind it
Insurance and safety
Answered at proposal, not at mobilization.
DSS carries commercial insurance. The limits and the carrier are stated in the proposal and a certificate is available for your file.
If your solicitation carries specific requirements, put them in the request rather than leaving them to surface after award. They are cheap to answer beforehand and expensive to discover during execution, which is the same argument as specifying the datum.
What to put in the request
- Minimum limits
- Per occurrence and aggregate, as your contract requires them
- Additional insured
- Who needs to be named, and on which policies
- Waiver of subrogation
- Whether your contract calls for one
- Certificate holder
- The exact entity name and address the certificate must show
How we contract
What is in the proposal, and why.
This is the section that separates a firm from an operator. An operator quotes a day rate. A firm tells you in advance what it will hand over and holds itself to it.
| The proposal states | Which means | What goes wrong without it |
|---|---|---|
| Scope | The site limits, what is captured, and what is not | The argument at delivery is about what was in the price, and nobody can settle it from the emails |
| Accuracy target | A stated figure and the method used to verify it | A number is quoted with nothing behind it; the reviewer has no basis to accept or reject the surface |
| Deliverable formats | The exact file types, named, and the software they open in | A folder arrives that the civil team cannot attach, and conversion cost lands on the client |
| Schedule | Dates for capture and for delivery, stated separately | Capture is fast and modelling is slow, so a single date hides which one is the long pole |
| Fixed fee | A price, not a rate | The invoice is a discovery. Day rates transfer scoping risk to the party least able to price it |
A fixed-fee proposal comes back within one business day of the scoping call. Where a solicitation carries a written specification, the proposal answers it line by line rather than attaching a brochure and hoping. Start at contact, or read what the deliverables actually are on drone survey and scan to BIM.
For your vendor file
Capability statement.
A one-page PDF carrying the compliance position, licensure, equipment, coverage, and contact details, in the form a procurement file wants it. Ask and it will be sent.
Request the statement
Until the PDF is published, ask and it comes back by email the same day, along with anything specific your file needs — certificate of insurance, licence numbers, or the SOP.
Procurement questions
The five we are asked before award.
Is DSS eligible for federally funded work?
On the aircraft question, which is the one that disqualifies bidders: yes. We fly NDAA-compliant, Blue UAS listed aircraft, under FAA Part 107, with a USVI-licensed surveyor of record signing the survey deliverables.
Whether a particular award is satisfied is determined by the awarding agency against that award’s own terms, and we are not going to answer for your contracting officer. What we will do is put the aircraft, the listing, the licence, and the insurance in front of them in whatever form they want it, before award rather than after.
Who signs the survey?
A USVI-licensed surveyor of record. That signature is the difference between a survey and a folder of drone output, and it is the thing a reviewing agency is actually looking for.
It is not a subcontracted signature applied to work nobody reviewed. The review follows the QC step and precedes the signature, and that ordering is the whole value of it. Where a deliverable will be designed against rather than filed, professional engineering review is arranged as part of that scope and identified in the proposal.
Are you insured?
Yes. The limits and the carrier are stated in the proposal, and a certificate is available for your file.
If your solicitation requires specific limits, an additional-insured endorsement, or a waiver of subrogation, put that in the request and it is answered at proposal rather than discovered during contract execution.
Can you deliver in our coordinate system?
Yes, and it should be in the solicitation rather than raised at delivery, because re-projecting a finished dataset is where quiet errors get introduced.
Name the horizontal datum and projection, the vertical datum, and the units, and the deliverable arrives on them. If the project runs on a site calibration, we hold the calibration. The product-side detail is on aerial mapping.
How do we contract you?
Send the site and what you need out the other end. A fixed-fee proposal comes back, usually within one business day of the scoping call.
The proposal states scope, accuracy target, deliverable formats, schedule, and fee, so there is a document to evaluate rather than a number to compare. If you are procuring against a written specification, send it and the proposal answers it line by line.
Tell us about the site.
Send the island, the parcel, and what you need out the other end. We’ll come back with a scoped, fixed-fee proposal within one business day.