Maintenance and recoat cycles

Running a condition survey for a decorating programme

Surveyor recording defect locations on a building plan during a decorating condition survey.

A condition survey is only useful if it produces something you can act on. A vague walk-round with a general impression of 'tired but okay' gives nothing to budget against. A proper survey records specific, comparable information for each area so a genuine programme can be built from it.

Questions we are asked about this

How often should a condition survey be repeated?

This depends on the exposure and age of the building, but an annual light review alongside a fuller survey every few years is a reasonable working rhythm for most portfolios.

Can a survey cover several buildings under one management?

Yes, provided each building or elevation still gets its own individual grading rather than being averaged together, since exposure and condition vary widely across a portfolio.

Does a survey need to be carried out by the decorator who will do the work?

Not necessarily, but whoever carries it out should record findings in enough detail that any competent decorator could price and sequence the work from the document alone.

What a survey should actually record

Substrate type, current coating condition, visible defects, exposure and access difficulty for each distinct area, recorded consistently so one part of the building can be compared fairly against another. Photographs dated and referenced against a simple building plan make the record usable months or years later.

Substrate and current coating noted per area, not per building
Defects recorded with location references, not general description
Access difficulty noted, since it affects both cost and timing

Turning findings into a programme

Once every area has a condition grade, they can be ranked and grouped into a sensible sequence of work, spread across budget years where necessary. Areas with the same grade and similar access can often be batched together to reduce mobilisation costs.

Keeping the survey alive after the first report

A survey done once and filed away loses value quickly as conditions change. Revisiting it at agreed intervals, updating grades and adding new defects, keeps the document useful as a live planning tool rather than a historical snapshot.

Set a review interval when the survey is first produced
Update grades rather than starting a fresh document each time
Note completed works against the original findings

How we work on this

We grade each area individually with photographs and location references, not a single overall building impression.
We group findings into a workable sequence and budget spread rather than leaving a long undifferentiated list.
We update existing survey documents at review rather than starting from scratch each time.