As-built drawings of a building that already exists.
Measured floor plans, elevations and reflected ceiling plans of a structure as it actually stands — not as it was drawn. Delivered in DWG on AIA standard layers, 48 to 72 hours after capture.
Price this yourself in the estimate calculator — no email required to see the number.
What an as-built actually is
An as-built drawing records the building that got constructed, which is rarely the building that got designed. Walls move during construction. Additions happen. Tenants renovate. Somewhere between the permit set and today, the drawings stopped being true — and everyone downstream has been guessing since.
We capture the space with a laser-based camera, then produce drawings from the measured data rather than from a field sketch. Every dimension traces back to the scan.
When you need one
- A renovation or tenant improvement where the original drawings are wrong, incomplete or gone
- A permit set that requires measured existing conditions
- A dispute about what was built
- A compliance record — life safety, insurance, accreditation
- Bidding work where contractors are pricing risk because nobody trusts the plan
From $2,500 for a single building up to 2,500 sq ft, including CAD floor plan, measured wall geometry, plotted drawings and 3D walkthrough.
What formats do I get?
DWG for the drawings, DXF for the measured wall geometry, PDF for plotted sheets, and a web walkthrough. Revit (RVT) on request. Opens in AutoCAD, Revit, SketchUp, Chief Architect and Vectorworks.
How accurate is it?
99.5% on distance and 99% on square footage. Wall distances measured to within 1 cm, against ANSI Z765 which permits 2% uncertainty.
Can you match our layer standard?
Drawings come on AIA standard layers. A remap to your own convention is quoted — set once, then applied to everything after it.
Three things called "as-builts", and only one of them is measured
The term gets used for three different documents and the difference matters when you are the one relying on it:
- Contractor's as-builts. The construction set with redlines marking deviations, handed over at closeout. Quality depends entirely on how diligently a superintendent marked them up over eighteen months, and the honest average is not high. Nothing in them was measured after the fact.
- Record drawings. The architect's set updated from the contractor's redlines and RFIs. Cleaner, and still a transcription of what somebody reported rather than a record of what is there.
- A measured as-built. Somebody went to the building and measured it as it exists today. This is the only one of the three that reflects the tenant improvements, the undocumented change, and the wall that got moved in 2014.
If a building is more than a few years old, the first two describe a building that has since changed. That gap is the entire reason this service exists.
What you receive
Dimensioned floor plans per level in DWG on AIA standard layers, plotted sheets in PDF, measured wall geometry in DXF, area calculations to your specified standard, and an interactive walkthrough of the building. Reflected ceiling plans, exterior elevations, roof plans, site plans and a Revit model are add-ons on the published schedule.
One round of revisions for labeling and annotation is included. A remap to a custom office layer standard is quoted separately — which is cheaper to specify at scoping than to request after delivery.
Tolerance, and what it means for you
About one centimeter on wall distances — roughly 0.5% on distance, 1% on area. Practically: a 40-foot corridor is accurate to under half an inch, and a 4,000 ft² area figure is good to about 40 ft². That is right for design, pricing, area verification, permitting and coordination.
It is not right for fabricating steel or millwork to fit, structural deformation analysis, or anything requiring a surveyor's seal. The full table of which tool suits which job is worth five minutes before you buy anything from anyone.
How long does it take?
About thirty minutes on site per 2,500 ft², and drawings back in 48–72 hours. Under 48 hours is +35%, under 24 is +50%, both published rather than negotiated.
Can you work in an occupied building?
Yes, and most are. Non-contact, no power required, no crew from you. Occupied space needing after-hours or phased access carries a published 25% uplift.
What if there are no existing drawings at all?
That is the common case and it changes nothing. We measure the building rather than verify a drawing, so having nothing to start from costs no more than having something wrong to start from.
Phoenix metro. Anywhere within 35 miles of Gilbert — Phoenix, Mesa, Chandler, Scottsdale, Tempe, Glendale, Peoria, Queen Creek and the rest of the Valley — carries no mobilization charge. Outside that, travel is quoted from the published zone table, and we work nationally.