A Site Measurement Checklist That Survives

Measure for the quotation, not for the drawing

The point of a site visit is not to produce a survey. It is to be able to price the job and to draw it well enough to show somebody. Those two goals decide what is worth measuring, and they rule out a great deal that feels professional to measure and changes no number on the document.

A useful rule: if a reading does not change a quantity, a rate, or whether something physically fits, it can wait. Take it later, when you are being paid.

The whole-flat pass

Do this first and do it in the same order every time, because a routine is what stops you leaving with a gap. Ten minutes, before you open the tape for anything detailed.

Per room, where the money is

Kitchen and bathrooms carry most of the cost and most of the risk, so they get measured properly and everything else gets measured adequately.

In the kitchen: the run length along each wall, separately for top and bottom, because those are priced as two runs. The window and its sill height, because a tall unit may not fit under it. The position of the existing plumbing and the gas point. And the clear distance across, because that is what decides whether an island is a good idea or a story the client tells about the firm that suggested it.

In each bathroom: the internal dimensions, the existing tile size if it is staying, the position of the floor trap and the shower mixer, and the door opening. Waterproofing is priced by area and by the height it is taken up to, so the wall height matters as much as the floor.

• —Kitchen: top run and bottom run measured separately
• —Kitchen: clear width across, before anybody says the word island
• —Bathrooms: floor trap position, and the height waterproofing is taken to
• —Bedrooms: wall length for wardrobes, and where the window falls in it

The six that become variations

These are the readings that are easy to skip and expensive to have skipped, because each of them is invisible until the work has started and then changes the price.

• —Ceiling height above 3 m, which puts carpentry on a different rate
• —Existing tile thickness and whether the screed can take an overlay
• —A structural wall or a beam that the layout assumes is not there
• —The distribution board being full, so a rewire becomes an upgrade
• —Floor level differences between rooms, especially at bathroom thresholds
• —Window type and whether it opens inward, which a blind or a tall unit has to clear

Photograph in a fixed order, then trace the plan

Photographs are the part of a site visit people are good at and the part that is least useful later, because two hundred unsorted images of a bare flat are not a record of anything. Shooting in a fixed order, one wall at a time clockwise from the entrance of each room, turns them into one.

Photograph the floor plan too, squarely and filling the frame. That single image is what lets you trace the flat to scale afterwards without going back, and the traced plan is what turns the readings above into quantities instead of notes.

The readings that are worth typing while you are still standing there are the ones you will otherwise transcribe wrongly: any number with a decimal point, and anything you had to stretch to reach.

Build the quotation while you walk

The structure of a renovation quotation is the structure of the flat: entrance, living, dining, kitchen, each bedroom, each bathroom. That structure is easiest to create in the flat, because the flat is standing there telling you what is in it.

Adding the areas as you walk them and dropping the works into each costs a few minutes at the time and removes the evening where you rebuild the visit from memory. It is the same argument as the measuring routine, applied to the document: the work is cheaper at the moment the information exists. There is more on this in quoting before you leave the flat.