Condition Surveys: Overview

About Condition Surveys

A condition survey records the state of a building, a structure or a site at one point in time, before anything is done to it. Every room, element or area is inspected, its condition is rated and photographed, and existing damage is recorded so that nobody can later claim it was caused by the works.

The survey is a baseline. Its value shows months or years later, when a tenant, a neighbour or a client says a crack was not there before, and the survey shows that it was.

When Condition Surveys Are Done

• Before refurbishment, fit-out or repair works, by the contractor, to record what is already damaged and is therefore not part of the works.
• Before demolition, excavation or heavy construction next to existing buildings, to record the neighbours' properties. In Germany and Austria this is the Beweissicherung, in the UK the party wall schedule of condition.
• At the start and end of a lease, so landlord and tenant agree on what the tenant has to restore. In the UK this is the schedule of condition and the dilapidations survey.
• For a property portfolio, periodically, to rate the condition of building elements and plan maintenance budgets.
• Before a purchase, as part of technical due diligence.

Terminology

Whatever it is called, the record has to be complete, dated, attributable to a person, and impossible to change afterwards. A survey that can be edited later proves nothing.

What PlanRadar Covers

In PlanRadar a condition survey is a set of tickets, one per element or finding, each with a position on the plan, photos, a condition rating and a description, plus optionally a 360° SiteView walk of every room. Every ticket carries who recorded it and when in its journal. Tickets can be locked and signed, and the whole survey can be exported as a PDF report with all photos.

PlanRadar does not come with a survey form or a rating scale. You define the elements you survey, the scale you rate them on and the fields you record. Whether the survey follows RICS guidance, a German Beweissicherung standard or your company's own checklist is decided in the form, not by PlanRadar.

What PlanRadar does not do is decide what is worth recording or what a rating means. The surveyor decides that. PlanRadar records it, dates it, locks it and reproduces it years later.

Roles and Workflow

Roles

Unlike defect management, nobody has to fix anything. Findings are not assigned to a trade and have no deadline. The Assignee and Due date fields are therefore optional and usually left out of the form. Read more in User Types.

Workflow

The process runs in four stages: set up, survey, issue, compare.

1. Set up. The project manager creates the Condition survey form with the element and rating lists, uploads one plan per floor, adds the project and the report template.
2. Survey. The surveyor walks room by room, records a SiteView run of each room, and creates a ticket on the plan for every element that is rated or every finding that is documented. Photos and rating on each ticket.
3. Issue. The project manager checks that every room and element is covered, locks the tickets, generates the PDF report and has the parties sign it.
4. Compare. At the end of the works or the lease, a second survey is done with the same form. Findings are compared ticket by ticket and run by run to establish what changed.

Each stage is explained in Condition Surveys: Workflows in PlanRadar.

The Example in These Articles

A fit-out contractor takes over two floors of an occupied office building to refit them for a new tenant. Before the first wall comes down, the contractor's site manager surveys both floors and the common areas the works will pass through: staircases, the lift lobby, the loading bay. The survey is issued to the landlord and signed by both sides. At handover, the same areas are surveyed again, and the two surveys settle which marks on the staircase walls were caused by the works and which were there before.

The example uses one form named Condition survey, a five-step rating, one plan per floor, and a SiteView run per room. Where a decision could reasonably be made another way, a short note points out the alternative.

Planning Your Condition Survey Setup

Five decisions shape the survey. Make them before the first ticket, because a survey cannot be re-walked once the works have started.

One Ticket per Element, per Room, or per Finding?

This decides how many tickets the survey has and what you can do with them afterwards.

Per finding is the default for a contractor protecting themselves before works. Per element is the default when the survey has to stand in a lease or a legal dispute. Read more in Import & Update Tickets for creating the element tickets in bulk.

Which Rating Scale?

The rating is a list field. Pick one scale and never change it, because a survey rated on a different scale cannot be compared with the baseline.

• Good, Fair, Poor, Defective. Four steps, easy to apply on site and easy to read in a report.
• 1 to 5. Common in portfolio condition assessments where a number is needed to calculate budgets.
• Present and undamaged, Present and damaged, Missing. For pre-works surveys where the question is only what was already broken.

Write a one-line definition for each value into the field description so that two surveyors rate the same crack the same way. Read more in Create & Edit Lists and Field Types.

Which Elements?

An Element list keeps the survey structured and countable: Floor, Ceiling, Wall, Door, Window, Radiator, Lighting, Sockets, Sanitary, Façade, Roof. Keep it to the elements you actually rate. A list with sixty entries slows the surveyor down on every ticket.

For portfolio surveys that follow a national element classification, use its codes as list values, so that exports match the client's asset register.

Tickets, SiteView, or Both?

A ticket records a finding. A SiteView run records everything, including what nobody thought to look at.

• Tickets only. Enough when the survey is per element and every element gets a photo. Standard for schedules of condition.
• SiteView only. A 360° walk of every room, timestamped, with no individual findings. Fast, complete, but nothing is rated or countable. Useful as a quick pre-works record on small jobs.
• Both. The SiteView run covers every surface, tickets record the findings and ratings, and each ticket is placed on the 360° image where the finding is. This is the example setup and the one that holds up best in a dispute, because the run shows the context around every finding.

How Is the Survey Frozen?

A baseline is only a baseline if it cannot be changed after it is issued. Decide how you freeze it:

• Lock every ticket once the survey is complete. A locked ticket cannot be edited. Enable the locking form setting and lock in bulk from the ticket list. Read more in Lock a Ticket.
• Sign the tickets or the report. A signature records who signed and when, and locks the ticket. Where both parties sign, for example landlord and tenant, use the report signature on the tablet. Read more in Sign a Ticket and Sign, Annotate & Share Ticket Reports in the Mobile App.
• Generate the PDF report on the day the survey is issued and store it in Documents. The generated report is dated and does not change when tickets change. Read more in Ticket Reports.

The ticket journal records every change to every ticket with user and time regardless of locking, so even an edited survey shows what was edited. Locking prevents the edit; the journal proves it did not happen. Read more in Track Activity on a Ticket in the Journal.

Numbering

Enable the numbering sequence on the form with a prefix such as CS, so that findings are CS-1, CS-2 and so on. Findings are referred to by number in the signed report and in any later dispute. Read more in Edit Form Settings.

What to Avoid

• Surveying after the works have started. The baseline is worthless.
• Recording several rooms in one ticket. One room, or one element, or one finding per ticket, depending on the approach chosen above.
• Photos without a plan position. In a dispute, "somewhere on the second floor" loses.
• Photos without context. Take one wide photo showing where the finding is and one close photo showing what it is.
• Changing the rating scale between the baseline and the comparison survey.
• Issuing the survey without locking it. If the tickets can still be edited, the other party's surveyor will say so.
• Assigning findings to trades. A condition survey documents, it does not delegate. If a finding does need fixing, create a separate defect ticket that references the finding. Read more in Defect Management: Overview.

AI Support for Condition Surveys

An AI agent only ever creates a ticket, a comment or an email. It cannot change, lock or delete a finding. Read more in Create & Manage Your AI Agents.

Steps to Carry Out a Condition Survey in PlanRadar

Condition Surveys: Workflows in PlanRadar explains each stage: set up the form, lists and plans, walk the survey with tickets and SiteView, review and issue the signed report, and compare with a second survey later.

Additional Possibilities

• Record a SiteView run of every room and place each finding on the 360° image. Read more in SiteView and Add Tickets to 360° Images in the Webapp.
• Survey without signal in basements and plant rooms. The mobile app syncs when back online. Read more in Working Offline.
• Create the element tickets for a per-element survey in bulk from a spreadsheet before going on site. Read more in Import & Update Tickets.
• Issue the survey as a PDF with every photo and a plan per floor showing the finding numbers. Read more in Create a Ticket Report (PDF).
• Where the client wants a formal document in their own layout, fill a project report from a PDF template instead of or in addition to the ticket report. Read more in Create & Edit Project Reports.
• Store the issued report in Documents next to the lease or the contract. Read more in Document Management.
• Summarise ratings per element and per floor in Statistics, for example how many elements are rated Poor. Read more in Statistics.
• Reuse the same form and lists for the comparison survey, and for the defect list that follows if the client asks for repairs. Read more in Defect Management: Overview.