Property held without a systematic plan for its maintenance tends to deteriorate along a predictable curve: modest problems become serious ones, and serious ones surface at precisely the moments when budgets are tightest and the will to invest is lowest. The survey work that prevents this is the quietest thing I do, and over a decade it is among the most useful.
This work is for the people who already hold a building, or a portfolio of them, and need a clear, ordered account of condition and a plan for the years ahead: what needs doing now, what can be cycled over time and what it's sensible to budget for.
What this covers
- I survey condition systematically, across a single building or a whole portfolio.
- I schedule the repairs and maintenance in priority order.
- I set out the long-term cyclical maintenance, approximately costed.
- I advise on phasing the works sensibly across years and decades.
I developed this approach over eight and a half years of client-side estate work with the National Trust, planning the condition of significant portfolios over the long view.
Who commissions one
Owners of a large or complex house who want to stop reacting to it. Private estates and landed families holding buildings of several ages and conditions across one property. Charitable trusts and community ownership bodies who have to show a board or a funder where the money is going and why. Housing associations and institutional landlords with historic stock sitting inside a modern portfolio.
What you get
I inspect every building in scope and write up its condition element by element. The report gives you a prioritised schedule of repair, an approximate cost against each item, and a plan that phases the work across the years instead of presenting it as one unaffordable list.
How the priorities work
I set out what needs doing now, what will need doing within a defined period, and what belongs in the ordinary maintenance cycle, and I give the reasoning behind each item so you can argue with it. Where something can safely wait, I say so. A schedule that marks everything urgent is no more useful than no schedule at all.
Where a defect needs investigating before anyone can price the repair, I flag it as investigation and tell you what that would involve, so it doesn't sit in the schedule as a cost nobody can stand behind.
When to commission one
Four situations bring most of this work in. You have taken on a building or a portfolio and need to know what came with it. A budget cycle keeps being set from guesswork, or a board wants the condition evidenced. A custodian has changed and most of what was known left with them. Or a major repair programme is coming, and wants building on the whole picture, not just the loudest problem.
Fees
I quote per commission, because one house and a portfolio of twenty are different pieces of work. Tell me what is in scope and roughly what you need it for, and I will come back with a figure and a scope in writing before you commit to anything.