Property Surveying - Building Surveys

External building condition surveys don’t come much bigger than the one recently carried out by Aerial Close-up Ltd at Lulworth Castle in Dorset.  The Castle was originally built in 1608 but was badly damaged by fire in 1929.  It lay in ruins until the 1980s when restoration work started.  Since completion of this restoration, no detailed appraisal had been carried out and the Lulworth Estate commissioned a report to detail the existing condition of the building to be able to develop a strategic plan for future maintenance. 

Traditional survey methods mean either scaffolding the whole building or the use of expensive abseiling teams.  Both options are expensive and require several days to set up and dismantle.  Aerial Close-up Ltd provided the solution needed to perform a detailed photographic survey without the need for external structures or any contact with the fabric of the building and it took less than a day to complete.  The ease of use of the equipment meant that the surveyor was able to view the condition of large areas of the external faces using the CCTV monitor at ground level and then zoom-in to photograph the areas of most concern. 

Rob Jackson of the Lulworth Estate commented:  “We were very open to cost-effective and novel ways to carry out this survey causing minimum damage to the building but providing the maximum amount of information.  The use of Aerial Close-up Ltd enabled us to gather a lot of extremely useful information in a very short time with absolutely no contact with the building.” 

John Buller of Aerial Close-up Ltd explains: “The use of our service gave the client major benefits in terms of time and cost savings over the use of traditional survey methods.  But it’s not all castles for us, we also carry out this work on any property from the humble semi to the larger industrial buildings.  Our service saves time and money.”