That has been one holdup. The regulations have lightened up since about two years ago when I started looking at this seriously. At the start there was a need for an FAA exemption that was very difficult to get. Now things have been relaxed and one can get a certification from the FAA and begin using it commercially. I've downloaded the study material that the FAA provides, which has very little to do with drones actually and more to do with airspace and basics of piloting a fixed wing aircraft. Its all relevant, so no complaints here, and general aviation knowledge has been a hobby of mine since my teenage days in Civil Air Patrol.

One of the architects in my firm and I have been talking about starting an LLC just to do our company's work. His dad is retired with a private pilot license, who also read through the certification material and could probably take the test without much study. It would be a nice retirement job for him to fly the sites, then we would crunch the data into usable data. The software to do the crunching is about 6 grand to get started, plus laptop , and a DJI drone, its a bout a 10k startup cost. Not too bad if only we had the time to get it off the ground. (pun intended)

For now we hire a company that has all of the credentials in place. One day we might be in a position to do at least some of it ourselves.