Frequently Asked Questions

Our current turnaround times:

House Setout                                 5-7 days

Unit Development Setout               5-7 days 

Title Re-establishment Survey       7 days

Feature and Level Survey             14 days 

Turnaround times can vary, it is best to contact us for a firm date.

If you have a house setout or title re-establishment survey in the northern or western suburbs we can often times squeeze it in sooner.

We pride ourselves on reliability once you do lock a date in.

Outlined below are the factors we consider when calculating the cost of a setout:

• Slope of site - flat or significant slope?
• Number of buildings to be setout.
• Rectangular/Square site or Odd-shaped site.
• Complexity of house or unit design.
• Is there a deep site cut involved
• Quality of architectural drawings (some plans lack necessary information - use a quality designer/draftsman)

We generally service the Metro Melbourne, inner regional and Geelong areas, however, we may vary this depending on the size of the job required.

For a setout please email us:

• Stamped version of architectural drawings (ensure it is an original "digital" copy, not a scanned copy)
• Title Re-establishment.

Double-check you provide the stamped version of your architectural drawings as we will not be liable if you provide the wrong plans.

Also check that the title boundaries are marked on site. It is mandatory of a title re-establishment survey that the boundaries be physically be marked on site. They are most often marked with painted nails or timber pegs. If we attend site and the boundaries are not marked, a wasted trip fee may be charged.

In place of the boundaries not being marked, we will accept a "worksheet" or "field card" from the surveyor who did the title re-establishment survey, but it is your responsibility to obtain this document.

SETOUT

If the survey has complexities such that you may not be able to easily identify our marks on site and relate them to the floor plans, we will provide a setout plan in PDF format. This plan will shows which walls have been marked on site and an approximate position of those marks.

For basic house setouts generally do not provide a setout plan.

FEATURE SURVEY

We will provide a feature and level survey plan in PDF and CAD format.

TITLE RE-ESTABLISHMENT SURVEY

A Plan of Survey will be provided in PDF format.

• Accuracy: we use quality surveying equipment for all survey work and
• Experienced with complex setouts
• Turnaround time and reliability
• 10 years surveying experience and a family history in the profession
• Fully insured

A setout provides physical reference marks on the job site that can be related to plans. Most times external wall lines are marked on site. These marks help other trades identify where the external walls, and incidentally the other parts of the building, will be located on site, without the building actually being there. E.g. An excavator needs to know where to cut or fill the site, a concreter needs to know where to placing his boxing.

Another important aspect of the setout is that, if done correctly it will keep the building within the title boundaries, as it should be. This avoiding all too common boundary disputes because a garage wall has been built over the boundary.

Please ensure there is no long grass, rubbish or piles of soil or rock on the site. These obstacles make our job exponentially harder

We may choose to leave the site without completing the setout or place the marks around the obstacles on site. If we leave the site, we may charge a wasted trip fee as per our quote terms and conditions.

You may choose to have the site cut done before we do the setout or after. The upside of having the setout done before the site cut is that the excavator is more likely to cut or fill the correct areas. The downside is that they may disturb the setout marks with their excavator.