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What is it?

A measured building survey is a detailed & accurate measurement of your property showing all the structural and architectural features. The survey gathers data, measurements and features of the current state of your property.

Unlike your estate agent's plans, these are accurate and can be used for construction or legal matters.

It is done before any work is undertaken on your property, and it will be the baseline for other professionals to produce their designs and reports from.

Who will use it?

Architects will use it for your proposed plans and planning permit.

Planning Officers will use it to understand the current state of your property against the proposals from the architect.

Structural engineers will use it to highlight structural elements and design proposals where necessary.

Right of Light Surveyors will use it as part of their report and advise you on the limitation of your property.

Contractors will use it to build all elements of the proposed works for your property accurately.

What do you get?

The end results of the survey are a set of plans (or if you prefer a set of drawings) showing the structural elements and architectural features of your home.

A Measured building survey provides the following plans:

• Floor Plan
• Section Plan
• Elevation Plan
• Loft Plan
• Internal Elevation Plan
• Roof Plan
• Ceiling Plan

... and most of the time it is combined with a topographical survey. This highlights the contours of the ground and external features of the property including the outline of the neighbouring properties.

Sometimes measured building surveys can go terribly wrong. So bad that you can be faced with insolvency or unable to pay the contractor or architect to fix the problem caused by the surveyor.

Here are some of the things that can go wrong:

• Wrong dimensions
• Correct levels
• Missing features
• Revisits

Of course there are many more but we've only highlighted the most critical items that can cost you money.

The Biggest Risk

The biggest risk from poorly produced measured survey is wrong dimensions, and angles of your property. Even though it looks like a tiny problem but it can mean that later on you might face additional costs from your contractors to make things right. This can mean delaying the project to get additional materials, or resources to get it right.

Most contractors charge for delays and additions, this can range from £200-1000 a day. This will be charged while the issue is getting resolved by your architect and surveyors. It could cost you even more if you have bespoke materials that needs to be factory manufactured.

Or sometimes it will affect you earlier in your project; resulting in resubmission of your planning application to the council for approval. You might even need to wait another 6-8 weeks to get the go ahead.

How can you solve this?

Getting the right surveyor is key to avoid these losses, and it’s not hard to find them. We've highlighted the three critical items to look out for:

Fully Insured

First of all, the surveying company needs to be insured. Without the correct insurance, you might not be able to recover the losses from the surveyor. There are a lot of rogue surveyors, or one man band undertaking surveys without adequate insurance. Check with them before you proceed. You want to protect your investment.

At Icelabz we are fully covered, and we have been trusted by over 300+ clients and architects.

Get Sample Drawings

Make sure that your architect or consultant is happy with the surveyor's sample works. If you are not too technical about the plans, here is a trick: just check if the corners of the rooms have correct angles. As most walls and corners are not perfect in a building, you should expect the surveyor to pick up the discrepancies of odd shaped walls and corners. If the angles of the rooms are squared or the walls too straight, then the surveyor didn't spend enough time surveying to produce high quality plans.

You would expect a surveyor to survey the room with their angles correctly.

Correct methods of survey

It is the biggest oversight in surveying, and many clients do not know what to look out for when selecting a surveyor. Depending on the method that the survey uses, the accuracy and risks varies.

The more manual the survey method is the higher the human risk in producing the plans. For example, if a survey is heavily reliant on sketches and notes there is a higher chance of human errors.

Here is a table of some surveying methods based on equipment used:

Our Method

At Icelabz, we have devised a unique method of surveying to provide you with a low risk survey while keeping the cost low. We provide you with high accuracy 3D scans at the same price of conducting a survey using the Total Station led method. Not many companies can do this because of the high cost of the equipment, software and licenses.

We could have only achieved this with our bespoke software and procedures that cannot be replicated anywhere else.

Our Unique Model

Our unique model allows us to:

• Survey different properties every day without affecting the delivery time of your drawings
• Have different surveyors working on your project without losing quality or relying on one surveyor's presence.
• To take on many projects from small to large without sacrificing on delivery.
• Avoid revisits on site so that you do not face additional fees
• Quickly add additional features and respond to queries faster than our competitors.
• Produce evergreen surveys allowing you to request additional sections, and elevations of areas we have surveyed months after the survey.