It’s worth it – office building condition survey in 2024

In the last few days we came across something that we didn’t want to pass by without saying something, and we ended up writing about it. We’re working on a building renovation project and we’ve reached the stage of a condition assessment.

Before we get into the specific case, let’s gather some facts about the condition survey itself in general.

Traditional condition survey

The aim of the office building condition survey is to eliminate problems and bring the project to completion with as little risk as possible.

In typical, domestic practice, the appointed designer – or the technical inspector before construction – goes out into the field at the start of the design. He takes a notepad, a pen, perhaps a dictaphone, a camera and/or a smartphone with good resolution images. Walk around, take pictures of the current condition from as many angles as possible and, if taking a condition survey at the start of construction, take a closer look at any visible defects.

Meanwhile, he diligently notes on the pre-printed floor plan the current conditions – cracks in the drywalls, leaks, broken light bulb, rewired air conditioning control, etc. He also verbally consults the facility manager and tries to record everything carefully, verbatim, so that he doesn’t have to come out again.

After the fieldwork, he returns to the office and processes the results of the survey: he takes a report, downloads the photos, marks what he found, in better cases he makes a floor plan with the approximate location of the shots based on his memory, finally saves the document in a stapled pdf and sends the whole package to the client by email.

This survey, whether carried out at the beginning of the design or at the beginning of the construction, gives less accurate results and, on the basis of the images taken

In the best case, it comes out during the planning stage, in the worst case during construction that the built-in cupboard was there on the drawing, but a metre away, and the air duct was only on the as-built drawing, in reality who knows where it was routed.

It’s all about chasing problems that arise again and again, and getting ready for on-site solutions during construction. If a condition survey is carried out in the traditional way before construction, it is difficult to identify the exact location of the photographs and there is a good chance that the part where there has been no damage has not been photographed or has only been photographed in a distant, blurred view, so that at the end of the renovation it is useless to try to prove that the damage to the previously undamaged structure was caused by the contractor.

But there is a simpler solution.

The point cloud survey

With the point cloud, neither the client nor the designer need to go to the site for every question that arises, but can interpret the survey results and make decisions together in the virtual space during a one-to-one call.

And how does that come here?

From the picture you can already identify that this post was created as a result of a condition survey of the V17 building at 17 Váci út, Budapest (source: kiadoiroda.hu).

Our task was to completely redesign the interior of the seven-storey building to meet the needs of six different tenants belonging to the Granite Group, covering a total area of approximately 10 000 square metres.

Obviously we need a lot of information for this, so we made an appointment with the client for a relatively quick and thorough survey.

It was clear from the start of the project that we would not follow the traditional methodology, but would digitize wherever possible. What does it mean?

The first striking difference is that we started the design by laser scanning the building. We captured the current state of the building to the nearest millimetre, together with automatically generated 3D colour images in a point cloud of billions of points, so we’re sure to have all the information we need to design a true-to-life representation. This survey can be relied on at the end of the project, when the handover takes place, and will certainly provide all the details you need.

The second significant difference is that our technical inspector did not take notes and photographs during the site survey, but displayed the previous 2D drawing of the building in Dalux on site and immediately added the defects he found.

This immediately put the entries in a digital environment, in a clearly identifiable place at the ground level, which was then linked to the point cloud and the model that was updated during construction.

The point cloud with the defects and the images were then uploaded to Dalux and made available to the client and the contractor.

What happened?

All the photos, drawings, notes, etc. immediately have been assigned to the model, without any misunderstandings or errors, clear and unambiguous, with all the necessary information and all the necessary documents, and everything in digital form.

And so the third, very positive difference was born:

And that is what change would be impossible without: it is not enough to want and apply a modern solution from the service provider side, but also to have an innovative and inclusive client like Granite Fund Management, who is willing to take meaningful steps to ensure that its current project is of high quality and low risk.