How much does a commercial building survey cost?

This is one of the most common questions posed by any customer in most industries, and one of the first too. Understandably so!

The answer is… well, honestly, it depends.

Much like when a new car is purchased there are a number of different variables that affect pricing. The make, model, engine size, flashy trims and plushie leather interior, even the colour.

Well determining the cost of a commercial building survey is not too dissimilar, with the main factors typically being:

• Size and complexity of property
• Location relative to where they are based
• Timescales of reporting
• How busy they are
• Additional services required

These are all factors affecting the greatest currency of all… TIME.

Commercial building consultancies will typically have a standard hourly rate at which they charge their time out at and these are the benchmark when working out how much to charge for their services. As you may expect these hourly rates depend on the expertise and experience of the surveyors, ranging between £110 – £230 per hour. An experienced chartered surveyor will be towards the higher end of this range with a more junior or less experienced surveyor towards the lower end of the scale.

So when determining the factors listed above the question of time and the appropriate rate is applied to generate a fee for a potential customer. Lets look at these in closer detail.

Size and Complexity

The factor that carries the most weighting, in our opinion.

It sounds simplistic but the larger the property the more time is required by a surveyor to spend carrying out the survey and reporting on it. There may be a requirement for two or more surveyors to inspect on a single day if access is problematic and timescales are tight also.

There may be instances where a smaller but more complex property may attract higher fees than a larger more simplistic property. This is due to the requirement for a surveyor to spend additional time either at the property or considering their write up when back in the office.

Location

Location, location, location, to coin a phrase. Location of the subject property plays a part in determining the cost of a survey, as time taken to travel to the property along with other disbursement costs such as; mileage and expenses the company may have to pay to their employees needs to be factored in.

Timescales and Availability

Another factor that plays an important role and relates to the correlation between the customer’s required timeline on when they need the property inspecting and reported on and how busy the company is at that specific time.

Typically, you might expect a 1 or 2 week lead in time from the point you instruct a survey to the point a surveyor shows up at the property and possibly a further week or two before the final physical report is received. This is not a hard and fast rule and will depend on how busy a company is or whether circumstances mean they can attend earlier, for example a cancelled survey freeing up some time in the calendar but generally its a good rule of thumb to go by.

Following a company’s standard inspection and reporting timeline should not impact their fees and what they charge in any way but if a customer requires a survey to be done quicker than a company currently has capacity for then the costs of services will increase, a mechanism of ‘Supply and Demand’.

On the other side of the coin, if a company is less busy or actively looking for work they may be inclined to lower their fee to ensure they secure the custom.

Other Services

Typically a commercial building survey will provide a detailed inspection of the property and report on the condition of the various elements and whether remedial works are required along with budget estimates for these works. The report may also go into detail around non-compliance items, statutory obligations and other occupational considerations. These will typically be reported on by a building surveyor with experience in the commercial property industry.

Where costs can increase is where further elements are requested to be reported on, such as;

• Reinstatement Cost Assessment – to determine rebuild value for insurance purposes.
• Dilapidation assessments – determining liabilities of existing leases within a multi-let property.
• Drone survey – some firms offer this at an additional cost, however we are now seeing more and more companies offer this as standard.
• Specialist sub-consultancy – The customer may specifically request the drains are surveyed by a drainage company or the mechanical and electrical services are reported on by a qualified engineer.

Worked Example

Lets put the above into practice. Say we have a company who receives a quote for a commercial building survey from a customer looking to purchase the freehold. The property is a straightforward modern office block, modest in size, say 5,000 square feet and is located within 10 miles of the company’s office with the customer requiring the survey to be completed in the next month. For something of this nature we wouldn’t expect any uplift on the standard fees a company would charge due to the relatively small size, low complexity and non-onerous timescales. In our experience this would likely take around 12 hours of a surveyors time, 4 hours for the inspection and say 1 day for the report writing, giving a fixed fee for this survey between £1,560 and £2,160 (excl. VAT) when applying an hourly rate range of £130-£180/hour.

Compare this to another survey request which has some of the parameters changed. Another office block but this one is five times the size at 25,000 square feet, built over 60 years ago and located 100 miles away from the company’s location. Now these parameters have changed, it is likely that a surveyor will require more than a day inspecting the property or possibly two surveyors for one day, then further time spent producing the report. Also consider that there is probably 4 hours of travel for the 100 mile journey and potentially a hotel stay if the survey is being carried out over two days. Now the fee looks much different to the first example on the smaller local office block with circa 3-4 days of time spent along with the expenses of travel and possible accommodation with a cost for this ranging between £4,680 and £6,480 (Excl VAT).

Of course these are hypotheticals but show how differences in the variable can substantially alter pricing of the services provided by consultancies.

Conclusion

So as we have seen and mentioned early the main determining factor is ‘how much time will it take’ this is what companies will be working out with the information provided. The longer it takes the more expensive the survey is likely to be and this comes back to the variables of each specific instruction.

When contacting commercial building consultancy firms looking for prices for commercial building surveys it is important to know the basic details of the property in order to get an accurate quotation and detailed scope of services. If you don’t know whether additional surveys are required or should be included in any quotation then speak to the company to get their professional opinions as they will be able to guide you based.

A status quo we have observed is that most commercial building consultancies are reluctant to putting their prices on their website, possibly for the reasons they can’t be specific or for fear their competitors will see them. At Bressummer A.R.K. we feel that giving people and our potential customers a general feel for our services can only be good and allows them to understand how much they could expect to pay before speaking to anyone.

You can find a dedicated page with our services and a range of costs – Cost of Services