For decades, inspecting a motorway bridge meant traffic management, access platforms and engineers working at height. Increasingly, the first look now comes from the air.

High-resolution cameras and thermal payloads let inspectors spot spalling concrete, corrosion and water ingress in a fraction of the time, with imagery that can be compared year on year.

Operators say the biggest gains are in planning: drone data tells teams exactly where to send people, rather than sending people to find out.

The challenge now is data management — turning thousands of images into decisions engineers can act on.