Intera Survey
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Heritage Building Survey

As-built CADDeliverable
±2 mmAs-built accuracy

The situation

A historic masonry building needed precise as-built documentation before renovation planning could begin — heritage structures rarely have accurate original drawings, and any renovation design built on wrong dimensions risks a mismatch discovered only once construction starts.

The approach

The building was captured at the same accuracy standard as any modern structure — Total Station control network, FARO point cloud — with extra care around irregular masonry surfaces and non-orthogonal walls that a purely CAD-drafting approach would smooth over. The point cloud was then overlaid with a colored BIM floor plan so the renovation architects could directly compare the two.

The outcome

The renovation team could plan against the building's real geometry instead of assumed right angles and nominal wall thicknesses — the kind of mismatch that otherwise surfaces mid-construction.

A historic masonry building shown as a point cloud alongside a colored BIM floor overlay
A historic masonry building shown as a point cloud alongside a colored BIM floor overlay

Questions about this project

Why couldn't the original architectural drawings be used instead of a fresh survey?
Heritage buildings rarely have drawings that reflect their true current condition — settlement, prior repairs, and construction-era tolerances all diverge from what was originally drawn, which is exactly the mismatch a fresh scan is meant to catch.
Was the building's irregular geometry corrected or straightened in the drawing?
No — walls that are out of square or masonry that bows are preserved exactly as captured; smoothing them into idealized right angles would defeat the purpose of an as-built survey.
How was the point cloud used alongside the renovation design?
It was overlaid with a colored BIM floor plan so the renovation architects could directly compare the planned changes against the real, as-built geometry.
Is this level of care standard for every heritage project, or specific to this one?
Standard — every heritage survey we take on gets the same non-invasive capture and point-cloud-first drafting approach; see the Heritage Survey service page for the general workflow.
What accuracy was delivered on this project?
±2 mm as-built accuracy, the same standard we apply to modern-building surveys — heritage geometry doesn't get a lower accuracy bar just because it's irregular.

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