Boundary Survey

From Wikipedia: Building surveying emerged in the 1970s as a profession in the United Kingdom by a group of technically minded General Practice Surveyors.[6] Building surveying is a recognised profession in Britain, Australia and Hong Kong. In Australia in particular, due to risk mitigation and limitation factors, the employment of surveyors at all levels of the construction industry is widespread. There are still many countries where it is not widely recognized as a profession.

Services that building surveyors undertake are broad but can include:

• Construction design and building works
• Project management and monitoring
• Property Legislation advice
• Insurance assessment and claims assistance
• Defect investigation and maintenance advice
• Building surveys and measured surveys
• Handling planning applications
• Building inspection to ensure compliance with building regulations
• Pre-acquisition surveys
• Negotiating dilapidations claims[7]

Building surveyors also advise on many aspects of construction including:

• design
• maintenance
• repair
• refurbishment
• restoration and preservation of buildings and monuments[8]

Clients of a building surveyor can be the government agencies, businesses and individuals. Surveyors work closely with architects, planners, homeowners and tenants groups. Building surveyors may also be called to act as an expert witnesses. It is usual for building surveyors to earn a college degree before undertaking structured training to become a member of a professional organisation.

With the enlargement of the European community, the profession of the building surveyor is becoming more widely known in other European states, particularly France,[9] where many English-speaking people buy second homes.

Lidar Surveying - Three-dimensional laser scanning provides high definition surveying for architectural, as-built, and engineering surveys. Recent technological advances make it the most cost-effective and time-sensitive solution for providing the highest level of detail available for interior and exterior building work.

Alta Survey

From Wikipedia: ALTA and the American Congress on Surveying and Mapping (ACSM) have jointly developed a set of land surveying standards, with the goal of promoting uniformity in survey information.

An ALTA survey is a boundary survey prepared to a set of minimum standards that have been jointly prepared and adopted by the ALTA/ACSM. Additionally, an ALTA survey shows improvements, easements, rights-of-way, and other elements impacting the ownership of land. An ALTA Survey is often prepared for commercial properties, as it will provide the title company with the information required to insure the title to the land and improvements to the high degree that a commercial development may require. In addition to the minimum standards set forth, a table of optional elements is included in the ALTA/ACSM standards. A careful review of the elements from the optional "Table A" is helpful in delineating a clear scope of the land surveyor's services.

A current title commitment is required before an ALTA Survey can be completed. The surveyor will refer to the title commitment for the legal description of the property and for the legal description of any encumbrances (exceptions). Areas of ownership, improvements and encumbrances will be shown graphically. If the survey discovers any encroachments, they should be shown graphically, and a note indicating the nature of the encroachment may also be added.

The certification language of the ALTA Survey should include the names of the affected parties, including as appropriate the buyer, seller, title company, and lender. The surveyor must work in close association with the title insurance company, as the surveyor and the title company are relying on each others work to show the matters affecting the ownership of the land and improvements in a comprehensive manner.

An ALTA land survey has especially stringent requirements as developed by a joint effort of the American Land Title Association and the American Congress on Surveying and Mapping. The ALTA standards are a nationwide uniform set of standards. Sometimes referred to as "the Cadillac of surveys." The survey is specifically designed to satisfy the needs of lenders, corporations and title companies when dealing with valuable commercial properties.

Plat of subdivisions

From Wikipedia: A plat of subdivision or plan of subdivision appears when a landowner or municipality divides land into smaller parcels. If a landowner owns an acre of land, for instance, and wants to divide it into three pieces, a surveyor would have to take precise measurements of the land and submit the survey to the governing body, which would then have to approve it.[3] A plat of subdivision also applies when a landowner/building owner divides a multi-family building into multiple units. This can apply for the intention of selling off the individual units as condominiums to individual owners.

Plat of consolidations

From Wikipedia: A plat of consolidation or plan of consolidation originates when a landowner takes over several adjacent parcels of land and consolidates them into a single parcel. In order to do this, the landowner will usually need to make a survey of the parcels and submit the survey to the governing body that would have to approve the consolidation.

Tree Locations Survey

A survey, which locates desirable or otherwise significant trees on a property, is frequently needed for design purposes or to adhere to a local tree ordinance. This type of survey can locate specific trees of a certain species or minimum trunk size as desired by the client. If the tree survey is being made in order to comply with a local tree ordinance, the trees, which are applicable to the requirements of the ordinance, will be identified, measured and tagged. The trees measured will be shown on a boundary survey drawing of subject property.

Drafting Services

Computer-aided design is the use of computer software to create drawings. Today the vast majority of technical drawings of all kinds are made using CAD. Instead of drawing lines on paper, the computer records similar information electronically. There are many advantages to this system: repetition is reduced because complex elements can be copied, duplicated and stored for re-use. Errors can be deleted, and the speed of draughting allows many permutations to be tried before the design is finalised. On the other hand, CAD drawing encourages a proliferation of detail and increased expectations of accuracy, aspects which reduce the efficiency originally expected from the move to computerisation.

CAD programmes, for example the worldwide market leader AutoCAD, are complex and require both training and experience before the operator becomes fully productive. Consequently skilled CAD operators are often divorced from the design process. There are other more basic programmes such as SketchUp that allow for more intuitive drawing and are intended as a design tool.

CAD is used to create all kinds of drawings, from working drawings to photorealistic perspective views.Architectural renderings (also called visualisations) are made by creating a three-dimensional model using CAD. The model can be viewed from any direction to find the most useful viewpoints. Different software (for example Autodesk 3ds Max) is then used to apply colour and texture to surfaces, and to represent shadows and reflections. The result can be accurately combined with photographic elements: people, cars, background landscape.

An architectural animation is a short film showing how a proposed building will look: the moving image makes three-dimensional forms much easier to understand. An animation is generated from a series of hundreds or even thousands of still images, each made in the same way as an architectural visualisation. A computer-generated building is created using a CAD programme, and that is used to create more or less realistic views from a sequence of viewpoints. The simplest animations use a moving viewpoint, while more complex animations can include moving objects: people, vehicles and so on.

Elevation Certificate

An elevation certificate (FEMA Form 81-31) is an important administrative tool that is used to document elevation information necessary to ensure compliancy with community floodplain management regulations. This form was created by the NFIP to determine the proper flood insurance premium rate to be charged for buildings in the floodplain.

Although the form may look intimidating, it is actually very straightforward. A set of instructions precedes the actual certificate itself, and a step by step explanation walks you through the form.  A registered land surveyor or engineer is the only person qualified to place a stamp on the certificate, which validates and legitimizes the information provided on the form.

Information on the form includes basic things like the owner’s name, a legal description of the property, which flood zone the property is in, the BFE (base flood elevation), the elevation of the lowest floor and machinery supporting the building, and the stage of construction. This is very important, and there are three choices indicated on the elevation certificate that may be checked off. The first one is based on “construction drawings”, the second is “building under construction”, and the third is “finished construction”. In the event of a flood and the need to collect on a flood insurance premium or disaster assistance, the NFIP and FEMA only recognize the “finished construction” certificate to be of value, since this certificate validates the actual elevation of a finished product. So this elevation certificate is what Pinal County requires as a condition of procuring a certificate of occupancy. The elevation certificate is the only “proof” that the home was set in accordance with the floodplain requirements.

Prior to building a house in any unnumbered Zone A flood zone, Pinal County determines the base flood elevation for that particular site. The Flood Control District then uses this information to determine the regulatory elevation at which to set the lowest floor, or the bottom of the frame of a manufactured home. This information is transferred to the permit so the inspector knows how high the home has to be placed in order to be compliant. But at completion of the construction, a surveyor or engineer has to come back out to the property a second time to validate that this house has been set at the correct height at which time he would fill out the “final construction” elevation certificate.