Measured building surveys

Nothing on a building site is square, level or where the previous drawings said it was. A measured survey is the record of reality, and it is the foundation everything else stands on.

We do not design from photographs, estate agents' floorplans or your own tape measure. A surveyor attends every job.

What we record

• Room dimensions, wall thicknesses and structural openings
• Floor-to-ceiling and floor-to-floor heights, including changes in level
• Window and door positions, sizes and cill heights
• Roof form, pitch, ridge and eaves heights, and internal head height
• Visible drainage, manhole positions, cover levels and invert levels where accessible
• Boundary positions and site levels
• Neighbouring windows, extensions and boundary treatments that will affect the design or the planning case
• Services, meters, soil vent pipes and existing structural members where exposed

What you receive

• Existing floor plans for every level
• Existing elevations, all relevant faces
• At least one section through the building, more where levels are complex
• A site plan showing the building in its plot
• A location plan on an Ordnance Survey base at 1:1250 or 1:2500
• PDFs at true scale for printing, and CAD files on request for your engineer or contractor

Types of survey

Measured building survey

The standard package described above. Laser distance measurement, recorded on site and drawn up in CAD.

Topographical survey

Site levels, boundaries, trees, services and features across a plot. Needed for new build, sloping sites, basements and anything where drainage falls matter.

Point cloud and 3D laser scanning

For complex, historic or irregular buildings where conventional measurement cannot capture the geometry. Produces a millimetre-accurate model that can be cut into any drawing later.

Utility and drainage survey

CCTV drainage runs and buried service tracing. Worth doing before you design a foundation across something expensive.

Why this is where projects go wrong

A survey error is not a survey problem. It becomes a structural problem, then a planning problem, then a variation on site at three times the cost of getting it right in the first place. The most common ones we are called in to fix:

• Head height in the loft measured to the ceiling, not to the underside of the ridge, so the conversion does not work as drawn
• Boundary assumed from a title plan rather than measured, so the extension crosses it
• Drainage discovered under the new foundation after the trench is open
• Floor levels assumed to match between the house and an existing rear addition when they differ by 150mm
• An earlier extension not recorded, quietly using up the permitted development allowance

A survey on its own

You do not have to commission a full design to get one. Plenty of clients need existing drawings for a lease plan, a sale, a valuation, a party wall matter, an insurance claim or their own architect. We provide the survey package as a standalone job.

How it runs