As-built drawings and floor plans of the building as it stands.

What you receive

A drawing set of the building as it stands today: floor plans, elevations, sections and reflected ceiling plans in DWG and PDF, plus the registered point cloud they were cut from. Where the project needs a model rather than 2D sheets, we deliver Revit or IFC through the Scan-to-BIM service. Because all sheets come from one dataset, they are consistent with each other, and questions nobody thought to ask on the day are already answered in the data, with no second site visit.

Each set is delivered with the things that make it defensible: the survey date, the capture method and its accuracy with conditions attached, the coordinate and level datum used, and a note of anything excluded or inaccessible. A drawing that does not say when it was measured and to what tolerance is a drawing somebody will eventually distrust.

Approved plans are not as-builts

An approved plan records what was permitted; an as-built records what was built. The two commonly differ: buildings are altered, some works are lawfully exempt from approval, and older records may exist only on microfilm. If you first need the official record, start with the BCA plan purchase guide; when what arrives is not usable, this service is the remaining route.

The pattern repeats across Singapore stock: a 1990s office building with three generations of fit-out, an HDB unit where the wet areas moved, a shophouse with a mezzanine nobody documented, a factory where the M&E was rerouted twice. In every case the design team’s real problem is not a missing PDF: it is that no drawing in existence matches the building. Measurement is what closes that gap.

When Singapore projects need as-builts

• A&A submissions. The Building Control Regulations require the plans to demarcate clearly the new building works from the existing building, which requires an accurate record of the existing. See our guide to A&A works in Singapore.
• Periodic structural and facade inspections. Owners are asked to provide plans; BCA’s own guidance contemplates reconstructing structural plans where they cannot be obtained. See PSI and PFI.
• MCST building records : the documents a management corporation must hold and make available.
• End-of-lease reinstatement, where the benchmark is the documented state at possession. See reinstatement.
• URA change of use. Turning an office into a clinic, a shop into a restaurant or a warehouse into a showroom needs URA’s approval, and the application needs a floor plan of the premises. More below.
• Fit-out and renovation design: tender documents priced against a wrong plan produce variations, and variations cost more than the survey did.
• Area verification: lettable, saleable and net floor area questions, computed from measured geometry rather than a legacy sheet. See gross floor area for how GFA is defined and who certifies it.
• A missing, illegible or outdated official plan. The common starting point: see what to do when the plan is missing or wrong.

Floor plans for a URA change of use

When a business wants to use premises for something other than their approved use, it applies to URA for a change of use before moving in. The application goes through GoBusiness and can be made by the business owner, the landlord, a consultant or a QP. URA asks for:

• A floor plan showing the proposed layout and usage of the premises;
• A location plan showing where the unit sits, for a unit in a multi-unit development such as a shopping centre or flatted factory;
• The owner’s written consent, or the landlord agency’s letter for SLA, HDB or JTC premises; and
• Supporting documents such as a cover letter, and clearances from SCDF, LTA, NEA or PUB where the new use needs them.

The floor plan is where applications stall. A landlord’s marketing layout or a sketch rarely states the dimensions or the floor area, and it often shows a partition that has since moved. We measure the unit and draw an office floor plan or shop layout plan to scale, with room dimensions and the measured floor area, in PDF for the application and DWG for your fit-out designer. You mark the proposed use on it and submit.

A single unit is a short visit and a one-sheet deliverable, priced per drawing. URA charges S$500 for the application and generally takes 10 working days to assess it; its change of use guidance has the current requirements. If you are not sure the premises need an application at all, URA’s enquiry on the approved use of premises answers that first.

Sheets, scales and conventions

The set is drawn to your conventions, not ours. We agree before production: sheet sizes and scales, layer or template standard (your office CAD standard, a consultant’s template, or a clean neutral set), line weights, dimension style, north point and grid, level datum, and which annotation you want: room names, areas, floor finishes, door and window tags, ceiling heights, structural grid references.

Typical contents of a full set: general arrangement floor plans per level; roof plan; two or more sections through the building’s cores and changes in level; external elevations; reflected ceiling plans showing services penetrations and ceiling heights; and enlarged plans where a room’s complexity or a statutory question demands them: plant rooms, wet areas, lift lobbies, staircases.

How the drawings are made

Site walkthrough and scope confirmation; laser scan capture (hours, occupied buildings fine); registration and QA of the point cloud; drawing production directly from the cloud, with every wall, opening and level traced to measured geometry rather than transcribed from a tape; internal check against the cloud; then delivery in DWG and PDF with the cloud archived for later questions.

Drawing from a scan changes the failure mode. Hand measurement produces sheets that disagree: plan and section built from separate measuring sessions, each with its own accumulated error. A single registered dataset cannot disagree with itself, if the plan says 6.42 m, the section says 6.42 m, and both can be re-checked against the cloud years later without anyone returning to site.

What a scan cannot see, stated plainly

A laser measures surfaces it can see. It does not see inside walls, above sealed ceilings, below slabs or behind fixed joinery, so concealed structure, buried services and in-wall routing are not in the deliverable unless the space is opened or another method is used. Where those elements matter, we mark them as unverified on the drawings rather than drawing an assumption.

Two more honest limits. Drawings record the building on the survey date: subsequent works are not in them. And a measured drawing is not a certification of compliance, capacity or condition: it is geometry. The assessments that follow belong to a QP, a professional engineer or a competent person, and we supply the geometry those roles work from.

What we need from you

Access to everything in scope, a site contact who can open doors, any existing plan however outdated, your CAD standard or a sample sheet, the level datum if the project has one, and a clear statement of what the drawings must answer. That last item matters most: a set for a landlord’s records, a set for a tender, and a set supporting a statutory inspection are different scopes, and naming the purpose up front is what keeps the fee proportionate.

Turnaround and cost drivers

For a normal floor plate the point cloud is ready within a week of capture, with the drawing set following per scope: typically one to three weeks depending on sheet count, annotation depth and how many levels repeat. What drives cost: floor area, number of levels and separate tenancies, the sheet list, annotation and dimensioning depth, access and out-of-hours constraints, and whether the deliverable is 2D only or a model as well.

Send the building and the sheets you need to get a quote. If you are not sure which sheets you need, tell us what the drawings are for and we will propose the set.

How much detail to ask for

Drawing scope, not scanning, is what decides the fee, so it is worth being deliberate. A records set is the lightest useful scope: general arrangement plans per level, room names and areas, principal dimensions, one or two sections. It answers “what do we own and how big is it” and suits landlords, MCSTs and insurers.

A design set adds what a consultant needs to work: elevations, more sections, reflected ceiling plans with heights and services penetrations, door and window schedules, and dimensioning against a grid. This is the usual scope for fit-out, renovation and A&A design, and the one that prevents variations later.

A coordination set goes further: enlarged plans for plant and wet areas, structural member sizes as finished, services routes where visible, and tighter tolerance capture in the areas that will be built against. It costs more and is worth it where trades will install against existing surfaces.

Ask for the lightest set that answers your question, and ask for the point cloud with it. Because the cloud is archived, upgrading from a records set to a design set later does not need a second visit: only more drawing time. That is the practical advantage of measuring once and drawing to demand.