We recently completed a Birmingham City Centre measured building project, which as well as requiring a 2D elevation of the building required a head for heights. This is not a standard question when we look to recruit new staff, but maybe it should be ?
Don’t forget when you are out and about to put on sun tan cream and a hat and take plenty of water with you. Such are the perils of land surveying in the summer time.
As lovely as it is to be outdoors in the summertime there are different weather hazards (under snow it is very hard to see features on the ground!) like wasp nests and waste high nettles. Thankfully we can often move inside where it is cool and dry and measure some floor plans !
We are looking for an assistant to join our team team full time as an assistant. This is a great career opening for the right candidate.
You need to have a good level of english and maths, be interested in maps and buildings, IT literate and a car owner. We work anywhere in the UK so sometimes the days will be long and occasional overnight stays should be expected. Initially you’ll be on site helping to gather site data, but we hope you would progress to drawing and surveying elements of your own. If interested please send CV to enquiries@adhorner.co.uk
It took 9557 days (just over 26 years) to reach the milestone but Wednesday 15th February 2016 saw an order placed for our 5000th land or measured building survey. We were hoping that when the 5000th order came in it would not be a 1960’s takeaway restaurant, but rather something more fitting. We are pleased to report that indeed it is a lovely thatched cottage, in Witney, Oxfordshire.
Beautiful to look at and interesting to measure, this makes a noteworthy 5000th survey.
We have never counted the exact split, but would imagine that we have completed over 3000 land surveys and approaching 2000 measured building surveys (either floor plans or elevations or both).
2017 sees us at the start of our 27th year as a company. How did that happen ?
Well mainly we would like to think on the back of our excellent, highly skilled staff and management team. Our attention to detail means that the end user of our surveys usually ends up with less work to do maybe this is why people like working with our drawings so much that we have such a loyal customer base.
Last year sadly we lost one of our colleagues after a short illness. Donald had been with us for 20 years so you can guarantee that there are still plenty of survey drawings out there with the initials DGCC.
Moving forward we are lucky to have found the next generation of talented surveyors and we are busy developing them in our own in-house standards of measurement surveying.
January sees us with several large projects on the go including a school in Gloucestershire, another in Oxfordshire, a football stadium, a racecourse and a preserved railway, plus the usual land surveys, floorplans and elevations of steel barn structures, Cotswold cottages, town houses, retail and industrial sites, like this recently surveyed bio-plant. There’s certainly plenty of variety.
Maybe not the cleanest site, but the most green.
Not the usual measured building survey, a more interesting Dovecote in Worcestershire was a recent project for one of our measured building surveying teams.
The start of 2016 has seen several teams of our surveyors busy in various locations in Warwickshire, from Leamington Spa to Studley, Warwick to Alcester, undertaking both land surveys and land and measured building surveys.
Recent projects have included a former shopping centre, soon to be a prestigious retail store, a residential care home, a former glove factory, a drinks factory, several hospital car parks, a couple of schools and the usual array of gardens and measured building surveys of residential properties.
December saw a milestone in the history of A D Horner Limited with us reaching our milestone 25th anniversary. From our first land survey in Redditch back in 1990 we have now undertaken over 4500 land or measured building surveys in the last 25 years.
We still take pleasure in turning old and unloved dwellings into shiny desirable ones again, through our expertise in measured building surveys. Whenever driving our surveyors are always keen to point out – ‘We did that survey’ to their long suffering families !
We are big watchers of various property programmes on TV so it is always great to see a project or architect that we have worked with featured. Last night we saw Nature In Art featured on Countryfile, where we have undertaken both measured building and land survey work. It was great to see what fantastic work they undertake.
We would like to think we have spent the last 25 years helping to make dreams come true !
My architect has told me I need a survey. What’s it for?
In simple terms we are map makers. We map land (land or topographic surveys – they are the same thing) and buildings. (Floor plans of the internal layout, elevations of the existing outside of buildings)
Usually if you are putting in a planning application for a new build, extension, major renovation or landscaping project you will need a measured survey.
This could be a land survey – a very detailed map which will show the position and size of existing features, such as buildings, paths, trees, boundaries and also provide information on the levels across the land.
This information is critical for planners to make informed decisions, for architects to design and for builders to build.
You cannot rely on an Ordnance Survey map for your project, they are not accurate enough, do not have sufficient level information or map the existing features adequately.
Actually reviewing where we have been undertaking land surveys this month, you would need to add several more counties to this list – Oxfordshire, Herefordshire, Wiltshire, Pembrokeshire, Shropshire, and Derbyshire have all been working locations for our land surveyors. Typically as the weather gets wetter, windy and wild we find ourselves outside in mud-fests and semi-darkness (whatever time of day). The upside to land surveys at this time of the year is that the vegetation is dying back, so at least you can see more of the woods through the trees !
