about
carlos femmer
writing from the field – not from theory.
Carlos Femmer leads enterprise drone operations at one of the largest engineering firms in the world. As Director of Geomatics and Remote Sensing, he runs a program of more than 60 FAA Part 107 pilots and a fleet of 50+ unmanned aircraft, executing mission-critical work across infrastructure, federal, and critical-asset environments.
federal and state contributions
Carlos’s work has shaped how the federal government, state DOTs, and the engineering community use drones for critical infrastructure. He stood up an official drone program inside the Department of War for NAVFAC — the Navy’s engineering command — and has executed missions on more than 30 Department of War installations. He authored the drone bridge inspection manual for the South Carolina Department of Transportation, the document that now governs how drone inspections are performed across the state’s bridge program. His methodology has moved from the field into the standards.
field firsts
His field work has established precedent at some of the most consequential sites in the country. He led the first drone inspection of the Golden Gate Bridge, the first commercial drone operations in the Grand Canyon, and drone operations at Pearl Harbor. He has performed inspections at the U.S. Naval Academy, delivered digital twin work for West Point, and helped with emergency digital twin response to rail closure. At Diablo Dam, he combined drone capture with AI-driven crack detection — a preview of where critical infrastructure inspection is heading. Each of these projects has been presented publicly, with client authorization, at industry conferences including Commercial UAV Expo, Trimble Dimensions, Geo Week, and USSD.
The locations may get attention, but the real thread is innovation—doing the kind of work that had not been done that way before.
See the case studies →
at the founding of autonomous operations
Carlos’s career began at a different kind of inflection point. From 1999 to 2002, he worked at C&C Technologies — the Lafayette, Louisiana offshore survey company founded in 1992 by brothers Thomas and Jimmy Chance, sons of the legendary John E. Chance — where he was part of the team that developed and deployed the first commercial autonomous underwater vehicle in the world. The AUV operated in the Gulf of America for oil and gas clients, in some of the most demanding underwater environments on the planet. C&C TECHNOLOGIES was later acquired by Oceaneering, one of the largest offshore services companies in the world. The lesson of that work was the same lesson his father had brought home from the Air Force: when you’re working on something that has never been done, the discipline is everything.
executive path
After C&C, Carlos served as Vice President, Chief Operating Officer, and President of an international aerial and conventional survey company. He built and scaled the operational infrastructure that delivers geospatial work at enterprise volume — managing field crews, P&L, international operations, and the systems that turn raw data into engineering deliverables. That executive arc shapes how he leads in the field today: drone programs are businesses, not flight schedules. Survey is a discipline, not a deliverable.
industry voice
His work has put him on the industry’s most credible stages. Carlos has delivered the keynote at Commercial UAV Expo — the largest commercial drone conference in the world — and has spoken at Trimble Dimensions, Autodesk University, and Geo Week, the flagship events for the geospatial, AEC, and built-environment industries. He has also presented at USSD (the U.S. Society on Dams) and IHEEP (the highway engineering exchange program), where the owners and regulators of America’s critical infrastructure gather.
what he builds
Beyond the day job, Carlos is the author of the UAV Mentor book series (training the next generation of pilots), creator of Applied AI for Business (Sharing practical AI knowledge for working professionals who want to integrate AI into real workflows), and co-founder of 100 For Life with his wife, Tabitha — a 100-day discipline system built on 10 daily pillars, designed to make elite performance repeatable.
His work sits at the intersection of three pillars most people treat as separate: enterprise drone operations, applied artificial intelligence, and human performance. Carlos believes they’re the same problem viewed from different altitudes.
THE AVIATION BEGAN EARLIER
One Generation Back, the Sky
Was Still Being Mapped.
The work didn’t start with Carlos. His father, William Henry Femmer, first served his country in the United States Navy during World War II. After the war, he continued that path of service and aviation, graduating from us air force Pilot Training Class 48-C — one of the earliest pilot classes of the newly independent United States Air Force.
Class 48-C came at a defining moment in American military aviation. The country was moving out of the World War II Army Air Forces era and into the modern U.S. Air Force, which had only existed as an independent service branch since September 1947.
As Berlin was being airlifted, NATO was being formed, and the institutional shape of American air power was still being decided, his father was learning to fly inside a service that was learning to exist. Disciplined airmanship in an organization where the systems hadn’t yet been written — that was the inheritance Carlos was inspired by.
The lesson wasn’t about flying. It was about doing the work seriously when the methodology was still being defined. Six decades later, Carlos would build enterprise drone programs at the same kind of inflection point — when the sensors, the regulations, and the deliverables hadn’t yet been standardized. The aviation began earlier. The throughline runs through both generations.
Major William Henry Femmer, USAF (Ret.) · Pilot Training Class 48-C. One of the earliest pilot classes of the newly independent United States Air Force. view the historical record at the national museum of US air force.
One of the earliest pilot classes of the newly independent United States Air Force.
THE OPERATING THESIS
Elite performance is a system,
not a talent.
Whether you’re flying a complex bridge inspection, building an AI-augmented workflow, or showing up for the hundredth day in a row — the principle holds.
BEYOND THE WORK
Husband. Father. Grandfather.
Carlos has been married to his high school sweetheart since the beginning, and the family they have built together remains the foundation underneath everything else. Based in Louisiana, he holds an MBA from Louisiana State University and lives by a simple operating order: faith, family, discipline, and field experience — in that order, every day. Everything he writes, builds, and teaches is in service of the next generation: the operators, the professionals, the parents, and the people willing to show up and do the work.
A personal note.
The ideas, frameworks, and opinions on this site are entirely my own. They are written from my own field experience, research, and thinking — not in any official capacity for, or representation of, my current or past clients, partners, or organizations I have been associated with.
Specific projects referenced on this site — including drone operations at the Golden Gate Bridge, the Grand Canyon, vandenberg space force base, Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Naval Academy, West Point, emergency rail response, and Diablo Dam — have been presented publicly with client authorization at industry conferences including Commercial UAV Expo, Trimble Dimensions, Autodesk University, Geo Week, USSD, and IHEEP. Anything discussed here is in the public domain.
This site is independent. The work it reflects is independent. The reader is reading me, not anyone else.
the record