I recently did a comparison between different forms of 3D scanning & conventional surveying methods for tree surveying & found some interesting results...
Based on this video, I know which method I would like to use. Scanning is definitely easier and far less boring. I'd rather spend a day in the office extracting tree information than in the field, crawling through the bush.
Another excellent video. While only looking at tree surveys it's not a large jump to view that video in context of topographic surveying generally. As a small operator with RTK/robot but no drone/scanner doing mostly boundary but some topo got me thinking about what I'll be using in a decade.
Provided you are not surveying a junk yard a lidar style sensor you can clip to a drone and then carry on your person makes a lot of sense to cover off a large range of sites. Place GNSS control in open to georeference scan to, make sure manhole lids etc. are clear in scan and no more frustrating total station work around vegetation. Still going to have to dip the manholes though.
For smaller operators perhaps the software/processing becomes a per project rental cost?