Capture that supports the competent person.

What we supply, and when it is needed

• Before the inspection. BCA’s PFI FAQ asks owners to provide a set of approved plans and facade drawings, plus the maintenance history. Owners with neither create cost and delay for the competent person. A measured survey producing elevation drawings and a facade type map answers that request before mobilisation.
• Recording the 10%. The report must include drawings of the selected close-range areas and identify defects using photos and mark-ups on drawing plans and elevations. If the building has no elevation drawings, someone has to produce them.
• Discrepancies against approved plans. The report records deviations from the approved plans, which requires an accurate record of what exists.
• Full facade investigation with missing plans. The regulations permit the structural plans of the facade to be reconstructed where they cannot be obtained and the Commissioner requires it. The competent person does the engineering; the survey supplies the geometry.

Why this lands on owners at the worst moment

The sequence is familiar. A notice arrives with a deadline. The managing agent looks for facade drawings and finds a partial set, a microfilm reference, or nothing. The competent person cannot plan a close-range regime without knowing what the elevations look like, how many facade types there are, and where access is possible. Every week spent hunting for drawings is a week off the compliance clock.

Measuring the building is the route that does not depend on an archive. A scan of the elevations produces the drawings the inspection needs, and it produces them as a record of the building as it stands rather than as it was permitted, which is the difference the report is meant to identify anyway.

The drone boundary, exactly

BCA circular APPBCA-2025-09 (23 May 2025) gives standing approval for drone operators accredited under the SAC Inspection Body Scheme (TR 78) to fly the visual inspection, and only with the competent person notifying the Commissioner in advance, present or with a facade inspector present, and personally reviewing every image. The close-range inspection, tactile, covering at least 10% of every elevation, is untouched by that approval and cannot be done by drone. Non-accredited operators still need the Commissioner’s written approval case by case.

What that means commercially: aerial imagery can reduce how much access equipment the visual stage needs, but it cannot remove the tactile regime, and any proposal implying otherwise should be read carefully. We fly imagery as capture for the CP’s use, within that boundary.

How a facade is captured

Elevations are measured from the ground with long-range LiDAR where sightlines allow, from tripod stations where a bay needs tighter tolerance, and by drone imagery where a face cannot be seen from the ground: internal light wells, sea-facing elevations, upper storeys behind podium set-backs. The registered dataset becomes the geometry for elevation drawings; the imagery becomes the visual record keyed to those drawings.

Practical constraints we plan around: adjacent buildings and boundary lines that limit standing positions, traffic and public circulation at ground level, vegetation and awnings obscuring lower storeys, glazing and reflective cladding, and airspace restrictions where flight is proposed. Where a face genuinely cannot be captured, that appears in the coverage note rather than being quietly averaged over.

Working with the competent person

The useful handover is not a pile of photos. It is a set the CP can work in: measured elevations at a stated scale, a facade type map identifying cladding, glazing, render and balcony types by extent, imagery indexed to elevation and grid position so any photo can be located on a drawing, and clean drawing bases for defect mark-up. Where the CP has a preferred sheet convention or numbering system, we produce to it, because a deliverable that has to be redrawn before use has not saved anyone anything.

What we never claim

Full statutory detail, who may inspect, intervals, deadlines and penalties, is in our guide to the periodic facade inspection regime. For the structural counterpart, see structural inspection support.

When there are no drawings at all

Start with the official record: the BCA plan purchase guide covers what can be bought and how. When the plans cannot be obtained, are illegible, or no longer match the building, measurement is the remaining route: see what to do when the plan is missing or wrong. For buildings altered since approval, the measured record is the more useful document in any case, since the report has to identify deviations from what was approved.

Turnaround and cost drivers

Cost is driven by the number and height of elevations, sightline and access constraints, whether flight is required and permittable, the drawing scale and level of annotation, and how much imagery indexing the CP wants. A mid-rise block with four clear elevations is a short capture; a podium-and-tower with internal light wells is not.

Received a PFI notice without drawings? Send the notice and the address to get a quote: we scope the capture around the CP’s programme.

Working the deadline backwards

A notice sets a date, and the capture has to fit inside it alongside the competent person’s own programme. Working backwards is the only planning method that survives: the report needs drawings; the drawings need capture; capture needs access, possible permits for flight, and a slot the building can accommodate. Each of those has lead time, and the drawings sit in the middle of the chain rather than at the end.

Practical sequence that works. Week one: confirm what drawings exist, order anything purchasable, appoint the CP if not yet appointed. Week two: scope the capture with the CP so the survey supports their close-range selection rather than being redone for it. Weeks two to three: capture, including any permitted flight. Weeks three to five: elevation drawings, facade type map and indexed imagery delivered. The CP then runs the inspection against a measured base rather than against nothing.

Where the deadline is already tight, capture can be phased by elevation so the CP starts on the faces already documented. Tell us the notice date and the CP’s programme with your enquiry, and the quote comes back sequenced against both rather than as a standalone survey.

Capture versus access equipment

The cost conversation on facade work is usually about access: gondolas, mast climbers, rope access, scaffolding. Capture does not remove that cost, but it changes how precisely it is spent.

Without documentation, the close-range regime is planned on assumption: areas chosen from what can be seen from the ground, access equipment booked to cover more than it needs to, and surprises discovered at height. With measured elevations and indexed imagery, the competent person selects close-range areas deliberately, and the access provision is sized to that selection rather than to uncertainty.

Aerial imagery contributes to the visual stage within the boundary described above, and it is genuinely useful for triage: identifying which bays show staining, cracking, displaced sealant or vegetation, so the tactile inspection goes where the evidence points. What it cannot do is substitute for the tactile regime, and any saving claimed on that basis is not real.

The other cost that documentation reduces is repetition. Elevation drawings and a facade type map do not expire with this inspection cycle: they serve the next one, they serve facade repair and re-cladding design, and they serve the MCST’s records. A survey commissioned for a notice tends to be used four or five times over the following decade, which is worth remembering when comparing it against a one-off inspection expense.