Platinum Anniversary: Skytec & ARGUS 1 Year Later

In the Spring of 2018, Skytec became the world’s first Drone as a Service (DaaS) provider to complete an ARGUS Unmanned Audit. This resulted in a Platinum Rating, the highest ARGUS rating an organization operating unmanned aircraft can achieve.

So, what has that Platinum Rating meant in terms of attracting new clients, hiring top talent and solidifying Skytec’s place in the UAS space? We’ll explain.

Safety first and foremost

According to Skytec CEO Bill Rogers, the ARGUS Platinum Rating has, first and foremost, positioned us as one of the safest UAS operators in the industry. And the difficult process to achieve this rating proves our commitment to safety.

“Our current and potential clients are very concerned about how seriously we take safety,” Bill says. “By achieving this ARGUS Platinum Rating, we’ve put their minds at ease that this is our number one priority. To have a third-party organization like ARGUS certify us in this way is a big deal, proving our commitment to safety.”

Just how difficult was it to get ARGUS Platinum Rating?

The long road to certification

Charles Cunningham, vice president of sales and marketing for ARGUS, says the certification is a three-step process, with each level building upon the previous stage.

“First, we collect information on your business and how it operates,” he says. “Checking waivers and legality, this step is where many of the other evaluators stop. Second, we conduct a thorough safety analysis of the company. We complete an independent background check of all the remote pilots, plus review the safety history of the company. Finally, the third step is an on-site audit to evaluate the company against the ARGUS Unmanned Audit Standard.”

It took us months of planning and preparing, going through audits and evaluations by independent contractors who would spend hours interviewing our employees on safety procedures and analyzing our protocols. Then we had to prepare hundreds of pages of documents explaining the rigorous standards we set and the many steps we take to ensure the safety of our clients and staff.

“The ARGUS bar was set extremely high,” says Bill. “It was not only intense. It was all-encompassing, exhausting and, let’s be honest, expensive. But we came out the other end as the very first drone as a service provider to get the platinum status. That's something we are very proud of.”

All this hard work was well worth it, as it positions us as a leader in safety in the UAS industry, a distinction that’s paramount to our current customers and potential clients. Knowing that Skytec has met or exceeded industry best practices and was audited by the leading evaluator within the last year shows them the emphasis we put on safety and that we are among the very best in the market.

Ensuring the longevity of our industry

When it comes to attracting the very best talent to join our team, Bill puts it like this: “Prospective pilots understand that because of this rating, we will be behind them 100 percent in the name of operational safety.”

As Charles from ARGUS explains, the ARGUS Unmanned Platinum rating is critically important, as it’s the hardest achievement to obtain. “Many other evaluators assess an unmanned operator for legality and compliance,” he says. “Being legal is the starting point. Exceptional is the goal.”

We’d like to think we are exceptional at what we do, and that our high safety standards will positively affect the UAS industry in ways down the road other companies aren’t thinking about yet.

“In ten years when you look back at the history of this industry, who is going be seen as an early adopter and who exuded leadership in the space?” asks Bill. “I would make the argument that in the very early days of this technology, we were one of the few that recognized that the best way to achieve longevity is making sure you have a very, very thorough and robust safety culture.”

With any young technology, trust must be earned in the reliability and safety of the new tools that emerge from it. And in the UAS field, we constantly face that. If safety isn’t taken seriously, people could be hurt, equipment could get damaged, and the industry could be deemed too dangerous.

Here at Skytec, we certainly don’t want that to happen. But it’s not enough for us to ensure our industry survives. We want to thrive and to innovate. The ARGUS Platinum Rating we’ve achieved helps make sure we can do that.

“If this technology is going to have a long life and be utilized and accepted over time, then we must be safe operators,” Bill says. “But you can't just give lip service to that. You’ve got to commit to and endure the process of getting safety accolades, and you’ve got to set yourself apart from your competitors. You've also got to have the respect of your clients. Over time, you're going to be viewed as an early adopter. And clients will say, ‘Those guys, early on, recognized that safety is priority number one, and we respect them for that.’”

To learn more about Skytec's commitment to safety, visit our Safety Page.