Drone services are new procurement territory for most property-management offices. The trades you hire every week come with familiar checklists — licenses, COIs, lien waivers. Aviation is a different regulatory universe, and the industry's rapid growth means the market contains everything from professional flight operations to a pressure-washing crew that bought a drone last month. This briefing is the checklist we believe every manager should hold vendors to — including us. A professional operator produces all seven documents without hesitation; hesitation is itself the answer.
The seven-document file
1. FAA Part 107 Remote Pilot Certificate — for the pilot on your job
Commercial drone operation in the United States requires a Part 107 Remote Pilot Certificate issued by the FAA. Not "the company has one somewhere" — the specific pilot flying your property holds one. Ask for the certificate number and verify it independently: the FAA maintains a public Airmen Certification registry that anyone can search. This takes five minutes and instantly filters out the hobbyist tier of the market.
2. Aircraft registration
Commercial drones must be registered with the FAA and marked with their registration number. It's a small document that signals a real aviation operation — professional operators treat their aircraft like the regulated equipment it is.
3. Airspace authorization capability
Much of metro Orlando sits under controlled airspace tied to Orlando International, Orlando Executive and Sanford. Flying legally near it requires FAA authorization, typically granted in near-real time through the LAANC system. You don't need to understand LAANC — you need the vendor to. Ask one question: "What class of airspace is my property in, and what authorization will this flight need?" A professional answers specifically. A pretender changes the subject.
4. Certificates of insurance — with the aviation distinction
Here is the trap most vendor files miss: many general-liability policies exclude aviation operations entirely. A drone contractor waving a standard GL certificate may be functionally uninsured the moment the aircraft lifts. Require evidence of liability coverage that explicitly covers unmanned aircraft operations, at limits appropriate to your asset, with your ownership entity named as additional insured. Your broker can confirm the form in one phone call.
5. Operations manual and safety record
Ask how the operator handles pre-flight checks, weather minimums, crowd and tenant standoff distances, and lost-link procedures — and ask for their incident history. The substance of the answer matters less than its existence: professional flight operations run on written procedure. "We're always careful" is not a procedure.
6. Chemical documentation
Exterior cleaning is a chemical event as well as a flight. Require the Safety Data Sheet for every solution applied to your building, confirmation of EPA compliance, and a runoff approach consistent with your stormwater obligations. Our own file leads with Citra-Shield — biodegradable and EPA-compliant — precisely because landscaping, tenants and retention ponds are part of the job site.
7. Deliverables specification
Get in writing what you receive when the drone lands: before-and-after imagery at minimum, captured at drone altitude, dated and organized by elevation. This documentation is not marketing garnish — it is your proof of maintenance for insurance renewals, board reports and warranty disputes. A vendor who doesn't offer documentation is asking you to pay for work you can't prove happened.
Running the vet in practice: a twenty-minute protocol
The seven-document file sounds like a procurement project; in practice it is one email and twenty minutes of desk verification. Here is the sequence we recommend managers run on every drone vendor, in order of how quickly it disqualifies.
- Minute 0 — send the request. One email: "Please send your Part 107 certificate numbers for the pilots who would fly this property, aircraft registration, COI with aviation coverage naming [entity] as additional insured, SDS for all solutions used, and a sample deliverables package." Professionals reply with attachments. Everyone else replies with adjectives.
- Minutes 1–5 — verify the pilot. Run the certificate number through the FAA's public airman registry. No match, or a certificate belonging to someone who "isn't on this job," ends the process.
- Minutes 5–10 — read the COI like a broker. Find the aviation or UAS endorsement by name. If the certificate is bare general liability, forward it to your insurance broker with one question: "Does this cover a drone striking a person or vehicle at our property?" The answer funds the whole protocol.
- Minutes 10–15 — ask the airspace question. "What airspace is our address in, and what authorization will you obtain?" Score the specificity, not the jargon. In metro Orlando, a professional will reference the controlled airspace grid and LAANC without being coached.
- Minutes 15–20 — check the deliverables sample. Dated, organized, elevation-by-elevation imagery from a real prior job tells you the operation documents by habit. A folder of marketing beauty shots tells you it doesn't.
Twenty minutes, zero site visits, and the field typically narrows itself to one or two operators. File the winning packet with the executed contract, diary the insurance expiration date, and the property now holds a vendor record that survives any audit, claim or ownership transition that follows.
Red flags that end the conversation
- "We don't need all that FAA stuff for cleaning." Factually wrong, and a preview of how they treat every other regulation.
- A GL certificate with no aviation language. The most common and most expensive gap in the market.
- No answer on airspace. If they haven't looked up your property's airspace before quoting, they're improvising your risk profile.
- Pressure-washer-first outfits. A drone bought to upsell an existing wash business is not a flight operation. Ask how many commercial flight hours the operation logs.
- No chemical transparency. "Our own special mix" without an SDS is a stormwater violation waiting for your address.
Contract clauses worth adding
Beyond the file itself, three clauses cost nothing and prevent the predictable disputes: an indemnification provision aligned to the aviation insurance actually in force; a tenant-notice protocol so nobody on the fourth floor meets a drone at their window unannounced; and a data clause covering imagery — what is captured, who owns it, and that footage of your property will not be published without approval. Camera-equipped aircraft around occupied buildings deserve one paragraph of privacy hygiene.
Why we publish our own checklist
Transparency is the cheapest credential there is. Drone Shine's vendor packet — Part 107 certificates, registration, aviation-inclusive insurance, operations summary, Citra-Shield SDS and deliverables spec — is assembled and ready before the first site visit, because a manager who vets vendors this rigorously is exactly the client we build for. Hold every operator to this standard, including us. The professionals will thank you; the pretenders will disappear; and that is the entire point of a vendor file.
Request the Drone Shine vendor packet.
All seven documents, assembled before anything flies — see how a professional flight operation shows up on paper.