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AirportImprovement.com      October 2026
INFO TECHNOLOGY 
LCQ | VDI
His overall verdict on drone work at LCQ: “Every drone project 
they’ve done out here has been a very smooth process—no 
barriers or anything to that effect.”
From Notepad to the Cloud
Bryan Savage, a licensed professional engineer 
in his 19th year at Passero, has worked in both 
eras. He spent more than 10 years as a project 
manager in the firm’s Aviation Department, 
designing runway extensions, rehab projects, 
lighting and drainage systems for airports 
across upstate New York and beyond before 
moving into his current role as an engineering 
manager focused on emerging technology.
When FAA Part 107 rules opened the door to commercial drone 
operations, Savage became the company’s test case. “I was the 
guinea pig to take us through all that,” he laughs. The punch line 
wrote itself: Drones are famously restricted around airports. “Here 
I am thinking that’s pretty much the only place that I want to use a 
drone, because all my clients are airports.”
But economics made his efforts worthwhile. “We have to close 
a runway for two days to get a [traditional] survey. Or, we could 
come in at night with a drone authorization waiver and LiDAR scan 
it with no interruption to service,” Savage explains. “If I’m an airport 
owner, two days of runway closure is just insanity.” A closure 
ripples out to every tenant on the field, he adds. 
For anyone who remembers pavement inspections from past 
decades, the before-and-after contrast is stark. Previously, a typical 
pavement management study required two people on site for four 
or five days, out on the tarmac from 7 a.m. with cameras, notepads, 
measuring wheels and spray paint, working from an 11x17 plan set 
with hand-circled photo numbers. In addition to salary costs, there 
were hotel and ground expenses. Back at the office, the deliverable 
was a folder of 400 photos and a map key. “If the field guy was really 
good, he drew an arrow on the legend to let you know which way 
you were facing,” Savage jokes, recalling frequent confusion about 
which airfield elements were depicted. 
Today, field photos arrive geo-tagged, oriented and sorted into 
project-specific digital forms, uploaded to the cloud as they are 
taken. Drone-collected orthomosaic imagery often lands in the firm’s 
design software within an hour after field personnel return to the 
office. Savage estimates some survey-related tasks now run 10 to 20 
times faster, with overall projects being finished at least twice as fast. 
Even so, he is careful to not oversell the utility. “Drones are 
just really a means of carrying sensors that we’ve been using 
for years—the same LiDAR that rides on trucks and tow-behind 
BRYAN SAVAGE

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