The UK Construction Blog

For professional building surveys

The extensive features of SiteMaster Building are especially interesting for users that need to create and deliver professional CAD drawings.

The layer management supports the combination of several floor plans in one single file. Heights of rooms, openings and symbols can be recorded and exported. Lasered distances are recorded in the background and saved on an extra layer for proofing purposes.

Draw fast and accurate walls (as single or double line), windows, doors and symbols. You can draw rectangular and circular columns, Recesses, chimneys and niches/ducts. SiteMaster Building offers you more than 250 CAD and numerous editing commands. The program features associative dimensioning and room area calculation.

The Camera function allows you to insert icon-referenced inspection photos and images. SiteMaster Building contains an Image function for direct insertion and scaling of photos and image underlays with support for file formats as BMP, JPG, PNG, TIFF and RLC digital photos and images.

VoiceNotes that can easily been inserted eliminate time consuming text markup by providing record and playback of high-compressed audio notes and instructions directly inside your drawings.

AutoCAD-compatible drawing symbols / blocks can be used. The Visual Symbol Manager lets you insert symbols ? as-measured, referenced or free in the drawing. You can export Excel-compatible .csv files with room/area lists and room schedule reports/symbol lists. The Check Distance function lets you compare ‘as-built’ distances to plan distances and record this comparison.

Experienced power users can use the visual Desktop, Menu and Toolbar Editor (DME2) and Lisp and/or C++ programming APIs to customize and extend the program furthermore.

Take out the guesswork
With Mobile CAD Surveying laser-precise, field created as-builts and existing condition floor plans, what you see in a building is exactly what you get. Using state of the art technologies, GiveMePower delivers detailed accurate building information including walls, openings, windows, areas, perimeters, widths, heights while automatically storing room and building information.

Know that it’s done on time and accurately.
Survey, measure and draw in real time in ONE Operation. You get exact square footage, detailed room and building data, and accurate mechanical systems information. Every time!

Reduce costs
Guarantee precise, intelligent data. Rework, delays, poor quality, incomplete, or inaccurate plans and building information costs everyone in the entire design/build chain valuable time and money. Mobile CAD Surveying and Sitemaster Building delivers much more than sketches, redrawn plans or simple line drawings.

Instant Productivity
Ready, reliable building data in easy to use layers that you can use instantly. Empower workers with real data and get everyone working collaboratively on the same page. Proven to increase productivity by up to 1000% compared to time consuming and labour intensive manual methods,  Mobile CAD Surveying delivers results with immediate payback.

With Mobile CAD Surveying building surveys, Architects, Engineers and Construction Managers can be more productive, deliver on budget and work to meet deadlines. With Mobile CAD Surveying and Sitemaster Building laser-precise, field-created as-builts and existing condition floor plans, what you see in a building is exactly what you get. Instantly useable, files are delivered in AutoCAD® DWG® and/or DXF® format, along with optional BMP, PDF, and Excel compatible stored room and building information. No surprises, means no delays and no hidden costs. You get exact square footage, detailed room and building data, and accurate mechanical information. Every time. Before you start a new renovation, upgrade or reconstruction project, get Mobile CAD Surveying as-built floor plans and gain the competitive advantage in knowing exactly what you are dealing with before you design, estimate or bid.

The Mobile CAD Surveying Advantage

·         Lower Your Bids with Accurate Cost Estimates

·         Save on Materials and Time

·         Design Immediately

·         Schedule Workers More Productively

·         Reduce Cost Over-runs and Overages

·         Mitigate rebuilds and rework

·         Reduce Man-hours on Backend Design

·         Get better bids on outsourced work

Facility Managers can manage complex infrastructure visually through detailed floor plans of a building with a click of a mouse. What you see in a building is exactly what you get. Ready, reliable building data in easy to use layers that you can use instantly. Exact measurements, detailed room and building data, and accurate systems information give you the answers to the tough questions. All the time! Digital files are delivered in AutoCAD® DWG® and/or DXF® format, along with optional BMP, PDF, and Excel compatible stored room and building information. Upload building data directly to existing FM, CMMS or CAFM software systems for capital planning, budgeting and asset inventory management. Before you start a new expansion, capital planning or renovation project, get Mobile CAD Surveying  as-built floor plans and gain the competitive advantage in knowing exactly what you are dealing with before you buy, contract or send to tender.

The Mobile CAD Surveying Advantage

·         Schedule planned and deferred maintenance reliably.

·         Manage your facilities visually through a floor plan.

·         Save on materials and labour costs.

·         Forecast budgeting needs efficiently and dependably.

·         Accurately report on assets.

·         Make informed decisions with relevant building data.

·         Reduce worker downtime.

·         Avoid cost over-runs and time delays.

·         Mitigate rebuilds and rework.

·         Generate tender packages with ease.

·         Get better bids on outsourced work.

With Commercial office space commanding a premium, building owners and managers can increase revenues by finding more gross rentable square footage space with Mobile CAD Surveying. Per current Standards, a resurvey typically yields a 2-8% increase in usable and rentable areas, which more than offsets the direct costs of a re-survey. Tenant discrepancies with occupancy costs based on square footage are mitigated, and building information for lease plans and leasehold improvements are current and easily accessible.

The Mobile CAD Surveying plans are client-friendly and serve as an excellent addition to the sales and marketing toolkit, or space verifications of leased property. Special considerations in the wording of measurements relative to existing tenant contracts are easily accommodated. Items clearly marked on the floor plan include:

·         Walls, windows and doors.

·         All rooms are clearly labelled and dimensioned.

·         Floor and building common areas, and vertical penetrations.

·         Usable and rentable areas.

·         Symbols showing key building component such as plumbing fixtures, kitchen appliances, office equipment etc.

Structural engineering jobs are helping the construction of London’s Olympic Stadium to progress.

The latest phase which began exactly one year ago, involves the internal fit-out of hundreds of rooms at the stadium. 700 rooms are being created in the area below the venue’s podium, which includes eight changing rooms and an 82-metre indoor warm-up track in the West Stand.  Tessa Jowell, the Olympics minister, said a new skyline was “starting to appear across east London” as a result of the construction work.

“One year after the start of construction on the Olympic Park and we are on-track to deliver a spectacular Olympic Games whilst bringing much-needed jobs and skills to the East End,” she commented.

The Olympic Stadium site is currently supporting 400 people in construction jobs, although this is set to increase to approximately 600 as the internal fit-out work requires more electricians, bricklayers and plumbers.

Earlier this month, the government announced that it planned to invest £324 million of the Olympic Delivery Authority’s budget in the Olympic Village.

Case Study – 1500 Premises/Churches Surveyed for the Archdiocese of Freiberg, Germany

Following a long and exhaustive selection process our client CleanConsult from Denzlingen has been awarded a contract by the Archdiocese of Freiburg to carry out the building survey on 1500 of their properties by using Gräbert SiteMaster Building.

This project was to generate exact floor plans following DIN 277 standard and collect all attributes including photo based documentation.

SiteMaster Building has been designed to make it an ideal platform for use – In the pilot phase by the church before engagement with us, the building survey collection of room attributes was carried out by two people. Gräbert GMBH development engineers, in consultation with CleanConsult reviewed the exact data collection requirements understanding the requirements and making the necessary changes, we reduced the personnel requirement by 50%. In comparison the other companies that have been appointed by the client are still using two staff to do the same job – as well as having to recreate the plans on an Office based CAD machine from information collected.

Read the Full Article here…

SiteMaster Elevations
Photographic Facade Survey

SiteMaster Elevations – surveying to precise exterior views
Save Time and Money – Now you can produce Elevational Drawings from Photographs

Photographic Facade Survey

SiteMaster Elevation is an independent add-on for SiteMaster. You can benefit from photogrammetric procedures by determining detailed measurements from freehand digital photographs or scanned images.

SiteMaster Elevation requires only one rectangle with two known side lengths for calibrating an image plan. The software lets you measure and draw a building in 2D with added height information on floors, openings etc.

It saves the exact measurement results by redrawing the image with points, lines, rectangles, polylines, arcs and circles. SiteMaster Elevation transfers drawing elements with state-of-the-art technology to your CAD system, e.g. or SiteMaster Building. After completing your measurements you can generate a report list of all measurements and areas. The results can be exported in excel lists.

Processing digital photographs of the building’s facade in SiteMaster Elevation allows you to enhance your project into a full 3D plan with precise exterior views. You can exchange drawing files between SiteMaster Elevation, SiteMaster (and other solutions) using the .FLX (PowerCAD) and .DXF file formats.

The BCIS e-tendering survey report released today showed the percentage of tender documents sent solely in electronic format has nearly doubled since 2006, and increased from 8 per cent around two years ago to 15 per cent now.

However, the percentage of electronic documents being delivered by physical means, such as on a disk, increased from 2 per cent to 46 per cent while the percentage sent by email decreased from 64 per cent to 46 per cent.

The greatest barriers to switching to a web-based system seems to be the perceived costs associated with web based e-tendering and the assumption that clients are not interested.

“It seems clear from these results that a main concern is still the presumed costs of adopting this system,” said Joe Martin, executive director of BCIS. “The eTendering service that the RICS provides to its members was designed specifically to address these cost concerns by eliminating any set-up costs and offering the service on a pay-per-tender basis. The hope was that this would open it up to more people and in particular smaller firms. However there is clearly still an ongoing challenge to bring home the benefits to more practitioners.”