How can surveys aid in compliance with building regulations?
posted 11th November 2024
Compliance with building regulations is essential to ensure a safe workplace or living environment. Whether you are building a commercial property for tenants or you are looking to renovate your home, expanding it to accommodate your growing family, a measured building survey can put any issues at the top of your priority list, ensuring your building remains compliant with the latest building regulations.
What are Building Regulations?
Building regulations ensure new buildings, renovations, conversions, and extensions, both commercial and residential, are going to be safe and healthy. Regulations cover specific topics from structural integrity to fire protection and acoustic performance to electrical and gas safety. These regulations have set standards in place when it comes to ventilation, drainage, protection from water ingress and contamination.
These regulations are evolving to accommodate new issues that arise when it comes to building and renovating buildings, ensuring that they are fit for purpose.
What are Measured Building Surveys?
Measured building surveys are assessments of the layout and measurements of a building. This is used to create an accurate representation of the property, showing the internal and external structure, along with architectural features, complete with the layout of doors, walls, and windows. Planning applications can be delayed and rejected without the right plans being submitted, especially when it comes to listed buildings. Measured building surveys ensures all processes are carried out aligning with the latest regulations.
Measured building surveys can also be used for health and safety purposes, including creating a fire plan. They have outstanding modelling and visualisation capabilities that can be used for land registry purposes, alterations, redevelopment, sales, and valuations.
How Can Surveys Aid in Compliance with Building Regulations?
Measured building surveys can be used for a variety of purposes. They are commonly used to ensure the building is meeting health and safety regulations, along with building regulation compliance. They can be used to ensure that the building is accessible for everyone, including those with disabilities.
These surveys provide clear and accurate representations of the building in its current state, enabling plans to be implemented. They can be used for fire risk assessments, identifying the fire risk, while understanding the layout of the property to ensure correct fire safety assessments are carried out, keeping all occupants as safe as possible.
Using state of the art surveying equipment, these surveys can be used to ascertain the glazing details of the property, along with reaching hard to access details. Any work that is carried out on a building must adhere to building regulations, whether it's renovating the existing property or adding a new drainage system. It is also needed when you remove certain features, or demolish walls.
Implementing Building Regulations Compliance
Building construction and renovation requires a methodical approach, including covering long-term maintenance. Measured building surveys help you identify opportunities for improvement, assessing how any risks can be addressed. With their dimensional information, these surveys should be the first step before any building work commences.
These surveys help to verify and record important data for historical purposes, offering compliance strategies that help manage the building project safely and effectively.
Conclusion
Whether you intend converting your loft into a habitable space or you want to build a new office complex, a measured building survey should be the first order of business. They help you ensure you comply with existing building conditions, while ensuring health and safety of the occupants. Contact MB Survey Solutions today to arrange your measured building survey.