Operator profileBrock GiumelliChief Remote Pilot
Twenty-six years of getting to hard places and coming back with an accurate account.
Elevated Imagery is one operator: Brock Giumelli. The person who quotes the job is the person who attends the site, flies the aircraft, writes the report and signs it. There is no subcontractor between you and the record.
Why the background matters
The report is the product.
The walking was never the point.
Aerial photography is commoditised. Anyone can buy an aircraft and fly a roof. What is not commoditised is the discipline underneath the camera — a record that holds up when somebody disputes it.
That discipline is a trade, and it is the one I was trained in. Reconnaissance is structured observation under time pressure, working alone or in a small team, in country that does not cooperate, and returning with a report a commander can act on. Observe rather than assume; record precisely; write it so it survives scrutiny afterwards.
The same sentence describes a roof condition report, a storm-damage file and a pre-season baseline.
Current and held
- CASA ReOC 9231 — Aerial Work — to 30 June 2029
- Nominated Chief Remote Pilot
- Remote Pilot Licence
- Aeronautical Radio Operator Certificate
- $20M public liability
- Standard 11 generic induction
- Coal Board Medical
- RPAS operations manual, JSA and SWMS library
The Chief Remote Pilot appointment is the part worth understanding. It is the accountable position on the certificate — the person CASA holds responsible for how the operation is run. It is not a title I gave myself, and it is why this business holds its own operating certificate rather than flying under someone else's.
The stack
BackgroundAustralian Defence Force
Infantry reconnaissance — sniper patrol second-in-command.
Led small patrols in demanding operational environments, delivering accurate and timely reporting that informed decisions at command level. Held security clearances throughout and operated under formal command-and-control structures.
Course record includes Advanced Patrolman, Reconnaissance Patrol Member and Scout Tracker.
Aviation security — air marshal
Australian Logistic Services, US Embassy Air programme.
Route and perimeter reconnaissance coordinated for ground teams — including UAV-assisted reconnaissance — plus daily intelligence interpretation and threat assessment, and multinational coordination across security forces and embassy personnel.
This is where unmanned aircraft stopped being a novelty and became a reconnaissance tool with a job to do.
Intelligence assessment
Cubic Defence Australia.
Responsible for producing timely, credible and actionable intelligence products, and for event reconstruction from raw intelligence and UAV-derived imagery into written assessments.
Reconstructing what happened from imagery, and writing it up so somebody else can rely on it, is precisely the deliverable in a contested claim.
Two degrees, Monash University
- Bachelor of Social Science — Security & Counter Terrorism, 2021
- Bachelor of Business — Logistics & Supply Chain Management, 2019
Completed alongside full-time work.
Since 2021
Elevated Imagery
Founded 2021, built from zero with no external capital, and run alongside full-time work. Thermal and visual inspection of substation and electrical assets, building, bridge and power-line inspection, orthomosaic and thermal processing — under a federal regulator, with an operations manual, standing procedures, airspace authorisations and a per-flight risk assessment. No regulatory findings, no reportable occurrences.
The whole engagement is one person: first contact, scope, attendance, processing, report, invoice. What that costs in scale it returns in accountability — the name on the report is the name that was on site.
Coverage
Based where the work is
Mission Beach, Far North Queensland — between Innisfail and Cardwell, in the middle of the cyclone belt. Coverage runs Cairns to Gladstone by road.
That location is a commercial fact, not a lifestyle one. When a system crosses the coast, the firms that need documentation are in Sydney and Brisbane and their people are on aeroplanes. I am already here, and I do not bill mobilisation from a capital city.
The short version.
Ten years' reconnaissance. A year of aviation security in a war zone. Defence-sector intelligence assessment built on UAV imagery. Two degrees. A CASA operating certificate with my name on it as Chief Remote Pilot. One person, on your site, who writes it down properly.