Existing Conditions Documentation for Owners

Applications Across the Lifecycle

Purchasing and Leasing

The foundation for smart acquisition decisions rests on the accurate evaluation of a building’s potential and the realistic assessment of time and cost for desired changes. Documentation provides this foundation by digitally capturing the building and site, facilitating renovation options evaluation and preliminary budgeting. Furthermore, comprehensive 360° photos enable virtual property visits, which significantly streamline the due diligence process and accelerate the analysis and commitment of prospective external partners (e.g., architects, contractors, permitting agencies).

Planning Renovations

Documentation provides the critical, objective information needed to resolve the "chicken and egg" challenge, where owners need cost feedback but professionals require a budget to engage. Sharing this information leads to faster, lower-cost analysis and more focused discussions on scope and cost. The inclusion of 360° photographic documentation allows consultants to perform ad-hoc virtual "visits" to fill in memory gaps without scheduling return trips.

Team Selection and Communication

Renovation planning is logistically challenging, often involving many primary and specialty contractors (e.g., HVAC, Solar, A/V). The owner’s generation of accurate, standardized documents, easily shared among all participants, maximizes efficiency and accuracy in the bidding process, drastically reducing communication time and eliminating unnecessary site visits by multiple teams.

As Builts and Operation

Because completed projects rarely match original construction documents, re-scanning and modeling the building following construction is the most efficient way to ensure the owner possesses sharable, digital "as built" information for future maintenance. If the project began with quality documentation, the time and cost to update the plans are significantly reduced. For long-term asset management, Building Information Models (BIM) can be updated beyond geometric elements to include a wealth of data, such as manufacturer, model numbers, service schedules, and maintenance contact information, for rapid retrieval. This simplifies efficient, ongoing operation and establishes the necessary groundwork for future improvements.

Selling and Leasing

Today's sophisticated tenants expect to understand a property in granular detail and from a distance. A building with current, detailed existing conditions documentation and models faces a much lower hurdle when being presented as a desirable option, accelerating the sales and leasing cycle.

The Investment in Efficiency

The comprehensive documentation process involves four stages: Project Scoping and Planning, Data Capture (using laser scanners and 360° cameras), Processing (registering point clouds), and Deliverables (generating final 2D CAD plans and 3D BIM models).

Although it is an initial investment, existing conditions documentation is a foundational asset that generates significant returns by mitigating risks. The effort often recovers its own cost by eliminating consultant "bid padding" (which covers their time to confirm existing conditions). Most critically, the upfront expense serves as an insurance policy, preventing costly construction errors, delays, and change orders that stem from inaccurate base plans, mistakes that can easily dwarf the initial documentation cost. Comprehensive, sharable, digital building information is the bedrock of responsible and profitable property ownership.