Scope first
Every project starts with the asset, the inspection objective and the deliverable format. Equipment follows scope.
Engineering-led · Geelong-based
An engineering background, applied to drone inspection.
Miles Away Aerial is led by Tom Miles — Petroleum Engineer (UNSW, MIEAust), offshore drilling supervisor and CASA-certified drone operator. Built on field-side engineering experience.
About
Miles Away Aerial provides industrial drone inspection services with an engineering perspective. The work is grounded in 15+ years of heavy-industry field experience — exploration drilling, P&A campaigns and offshore field operations across Australia, the North West Shelf and Papua New Guinea — and the drone capability has been integrated into that field role since 2015.
The service is straightforward: scope, capture, process, report. Inspection data is structured for engineering use rather than aerial-photography presentation, and reporting is built to fit your asset-management workflow.
CASA-certified. Offshore-credentialled. $20M public liability insured.
Background
Tom Miles — Petroleum Engineer & Chief Pilot.
Tom is a graduate of the University of New South Wales (Bachelor of Petroleum Engineering) and a Member of Engineers Australia (MIEAust). His 15+ year career has been across exploration drilling, P&A campaigns and offshore field operations in Australia, Papua New Guinea, the Middle East and the North West Shelf.
Current role: Offshore Drilling Supervisor — offshore MODU, Bass Strait, Victoria. Multi-operator rig-share (Woodside, ConocoPhillips, Beach, Amplitude). Prior roles include Offshore Drilling Supervisor on the Shell Crux Project (North West Shelf), Offshore Wells Supervisor for ExxonMobil (Bass Strait P&A), Senior Drilling Supervisor for Beach Energy / Mitsui E&P Australia (Perth Basin — Ventia Rig 106), and Senior Drilling Supervisor for Santos / Oil Search PNG (PNG Highlands).
Tom has integrated drone work into drilling and field operations since 2015 — initially to support asset inspection, site inspection, visual condition checks and worksite awareness in remote operating environments. Miles Away Aerial formalises that workflow as a standalone industrial drone inspection service.
Credentials
Engineering, aviation & offshore.
Approach
How the work runs.
CASA-compliant
Every flight is planned and risk-assessed through AVCRM, with permit alignment, airspace clearance and site-specific JSA before mobilisation.
Repeatable captures
Flight plans are documented for re-execution. The first capture forms a baseline that future inspections compare against.
Practical reporting
Observation registers, location notes and priority comments for client or engineer review — structured to suit an asset register or CMMS.
Equipment
Enterprise hardware. In-house processing.
DJI enterprise platforms
Enterprise DJI aircraft with high-zoom optical and thermal payloads, RTK and full obstacle-detection capability.
Zenmuse L2 LiDAR
Drone-mounted LiDAR for bare-earth, corridor and structural geometry. Integrated IMU and RGB camera.
Radiometric thermal
Enterprise-grade radiometric thermal payloads for electrical, mechanical and envelope inspection.
RTK / PPK workflow
RTK and PPK base-station workflow for mapping and volumetric capture with documented accuracy checks. Licensed surveyor coordination available where certified survey output is required.
DJI Terra processing
In-house photogrammetric and LiDAR processing through DJI Terra, DroneDeploy and Pix4DMapper.
AVCRM compliance
All flight planning, JSAs, risk assessment and airspace approvals managed through AVCRM.
Direct line
Talk to the engineer.
If you'd like a direct technical conversation about your asset, your scope, or whether drone capture is the right tool for your problem — send a message or call.