GB2461647A - A system for surveying buildings and evaluation of building properties - Google Patents

Abstract

A system for surveying buildings comprises: a portable surveying device 30 creating a plan 40 of a building to be surveyed 10; a local computer 50 in communication with the surveying device 30; a remote server 60 in communication with the local computer 50; and a data model 80 comprising data on a plurality of building archetypes. The server 60 includes a database comprising a plurality of archetypes of buildings to be surveyed. A subset of the database corresponding to the building to be surveyed is supplied as an information template. The template is downloaded to the portable device 30 for use by an operator surveying the building 10. The portable device 30 provides the user with a plurality of prompts to obtain data from the building 10. The data obtained is compared in the portable surveying device 30 with the data of the information template such that if any mismatch occurs, the user is instructed to obtain further data. Data obtained is fed back to the server 60 via the local computer 50 to update the database by refining or defining an archetype, and to produce a survey report in the form of one or more building plans.

Description

A surveying system The present invention relates to a surveying system, suitable for surveying buildings. In particular, the device is suitable for use in estate agency including the evaluation of building properties.

It is becoming increasingly common for estate agents to provide on-line estate agency services. These services typically comprise photographic evidence of a property for sale along with summary information, such as that provided in what is termed a home information pack. A home information pack includes as technical content an assessment of the energy efficiency of a building. For this it is necessary to survey a building by taking a series of measurements to determine the dimensions of the building and also record the materials from which the building is made.

It is an object of the present invention to facilitate the provision of information in estate agency. For example in the provision of on-line estate agency services.

It is a further object of the invention to facilitate the provision of information for the surveying of a building. For example, for the purposes of determining energy efficiency of that building. A particular example being the provision of an energy report for the purposes of use in a home information pack. In a further example for the surveying of a building for the purpose of providing a surveyor's report as to the integrity of a building.

It is a further object of the present invention to facilitate the surveying of a building; in particular, it is an object to facilitate the surveying of a building by providing an automated framework for data acquisition and checking. It is a further object to provide a mechanism of developing a data set for the optimal surveying of buildings and the reduction and detection of surveying errors and the improved detection of building faults.

The present invention provides a system for surveying buildings, the system comprising: i) a portable surveying device equipped with software capable of creating a digital plan of the building to be surveyed (40); ii) a local computer (50) for communication with the surveying device (30); iii) a remote server (60) acting as a hub for a plurality of networked local computers (50', 50") each having a function equivalent to the local computer (50); iv) a system data model (80) comprising at least data on a plurality of building archetypes (180, or forms); vi) optional data external to the system (70) relating to parameters of technical relevance to a property survey for optimisation of a system data model; wherein the server (60) holds a database of information which comprises a plurality of archetypes (180, 190, 200) of buildings to be surveyed (10), and optionally access to said, additional, data external to the system (70) so as to, in use, supply a sub set of the data base corresponding to data relevant to a building to be surveyed based upon initially input data corresponding to a building to be surveyed (10), and wherein the sub set of the database is manipulated such that a further sub set of the archetype, in the form of an information template corresponding to one or more specific criteria in the form of numeric values or ranges of buildings measurements is download to said portable surveying device (30) for use by an operator in the surveying of a building to be surveyed (10), such that when surveying the building to be surveyed (10) the portable surveying device (30) provides the user with a plurality of prompts to obtain data from the building (10) and the data obtained is compared by a data processing unit in the portable surveying device to the data in the information template such that any mismatch between the data obtained and the template data result in the user being instructed to obtain further data relevant to the first data obtained and wherein the data obtained by the portable surveying device is fed back via the server, via the local computer so as to update the database, such as by refining and archetype or defining an archetype and to produce a survey report comprising a consolidated data set comprising the measurements taken in the form of one or more building plans.

An archetype or form' is a compilation of data to define an idealised, or abstract, description of a building. An archetype is a data set defining characteristics into which a group of buildings will fall and containing a set of data to which buildings in that group will typically exhibit but which may not necessarily be exhibited by any building in the group. By example, and archetype of a two bed roomed terraced property built between 1900 and 1910 may be present. Many buildings will fall within this archetype, the archetype typically based upon real data may specify that a downstairs ceiling height should is 2.3m. No property in the group may actually have such a ceiling height, the value, for example being simply an average over several buildings.

The system preferably dynamically updates the archetypes from new survey data obtained from buildings surveyed by the system. Building upon the above example, a further building falling within the group archetype may have a room height of 2.35 m and the average height may therefore be updated accordingly.

The system preferably creates new archetypes by dividing existing system archetypes when the average of two or more data ranges in the archetype differ by more than one, preferably two standard deviations, as determined from the narrower of the distributions of the separated data sets. Using the above example, buildings in a specific area may have a room height of 3m such that a bimodal distribution of room height in the archetype may be present. So as to prevent the archetype providing an information template with an expected height of 2.3+3/2 = 2.65m and hence a user continually be prompted to remeasure room height, the archetype may be split into two, one archetype having the 2.3 m room height and other the 3 m room height such that they information template generated would only alert the user when a given reading fitted the chosen archetype, in which case another archetype may be a best fit in the consolidated data set and a set of apparently anomalous buildings measurements readings would be understood to relate to another archetype thus showing an apparently on sat unsatisfactory building to be satisfactory. Alternatively no archetype may be satisfied and the building may then be judged by the system as being potentially defective.

Similarly a building already having been measured, say for a previous sale, even if now conforming to an archetype may be considered potentially defective of it has changed significantly in buildings measurements. Particularly physical size, as characterised by measured internal distances.

The system preferably merges archetypes when only one data range differs between archetypes. This prevents unwanted proliferation of archetypes, reduces processing time and memory usage. By extension of the above example, data for room height in an buildings extension to properties of the above archetypes may vary widely but this need not require a further archetype.

In this way the system can differentiate and consolidate building types more efficiently than a human operator who may fail to recognise that a common designs of different economic value and aesthetic appearance are in fact technically equivalent. This is particularly so when different users (i.e. operators of the plurality of portable surveying devices) operate, in say, depressed inner city and prosperous suburb and fail to realise that at the time of construction the same architect was involved and hence a larger pool of reference data, such as may be used to identify defects, is available than previously realised.

The portable/hand held surveying unit/device equipped with software capable of creating a digital plan of the building to be surveyed may be defined as follows: A hand-held surveying unit, the surveying unit comprising: i) an electronic processing and control block; ii) a screen for displaying information to a user and an optional transducer for producing audible sound to communicate to a user; iii) means for the manual input of information by a user; iv) control block software for constructing a plan of a building; v) a data acquisition means comprising a distance measuring device for measuring distance from a first side of the device to an object remote from the device; vi) an optional data acquisition means selected from one or more of: a) a digital stills camera; b) a digital video camera; c) a conductivity meter; d) a temperature sensor; e) a light intensity meter; f) an electronic spirit level; and g) a global positioning system receiver, and vi) and input output port to send and receive data from the control block to devices external to the hand-held surveying device; wherein the control block, in use, is configured to provide prompts to a user to construct a plan of a building to be surveyed, those prompts including prompts to acquire data from the data acquisition means at points identified on the plan of the building.

Items a) to g) above and said distance measuring device, preferably c), d), f) and said distance measuring device, most preferably the distance measuring device are the sources of the buildings measurements of the present invention, the nature of those measurements being construed accordingly.

The a portable surveying device' will typically be one of a plurality of such devices each contributing data into the system so as to update the database and archetypes on the server.

A preferred mode of operation of the system of the present invention, is the provision of automatic data acquisition by the portable data acquisition unit. Specifically, the portable surveying device provides prompts to a user to construct a plan of a building to be surveyed, those prompts include prompts to acquire data from the data acquisition means at places identified on the plan of the building, such as displayed a the screen of the portable surveying device. A built in processor running software may also identify occasions, based upon location of the device and/or environmental conditions in which there is a high statistical probability that further acquired data will be useful and automatic data acquisition may be triggered, such as temperature.

By way of illustration, a building being surveyed is identified as falling within a defined area, such as an estate of houses, likely to be of a similar type and year of construction.

The archetype for this type of building by means of the information template is able to relate to the portable surveying device that there is a 90% probability that the property will comprise, say, six rooms and that there is a 80% plurality that distortion of the internal and external walls will have occurred unless wall ties have been installed. The device will therefore prompt the user for a further room survey if less than six rooms have been entered. Further, a plurality of room dimension readings moving from an internal supporting wall to a region remote therefrom will be prompted from the user, so as to potentially establish distortion in the dimensions of the room wall, distortions which may not be aesthetically evident due to decoration. Further prompts may be generated, such as where the property would be expected to have a cavity wall, such that a question about cavity wall insulation may be generated. Meanwhile, the device will have partitioned memory into six segments and gratuitous photographic information will be acquired, along with optionally light intensity and temperature information to fill unused memory during the survey, the memory being cleared before a subsequent survey after uploading to the server.

As illustrated above, the information template is a sub set of the archetype. The archetype typically comprising further information so as to enable selection of the archetype, the information template being a summary of information on the assumption that the archetype is correctly chosen.

In a preferred embodiment of the system the portable device is in radio communication, via the local computer, to the server such that if sufficient data is received in contradiction to the content of the information template that data is used by the server to try and establish if a more appropriate archetype can be established and a new information template provided. This has the advantage that the prompts provided by the portable device need not be excessive since the system can have a self-correcting function.

By way of further illustration, a user may have positioned the device for the taking a distance measurement and the control block may determine that the lighting conditions being suitable for obtaining photographic information and the camera being oriented substantially horizontally and the distance measured being greater than 2 m, in this situation a gratuitous photograph will be acquired. Where the device carries out automatic data acquisition the device preferably allocates the automatic data acquired to a first status and to data required by the user to a second status, wherein when there is a shortage of available memory new data having the second status replaces data having the first status. This makes optimal use of available memory in the device and optical use of the time in which the device is present in the location to be surveyed. Similarly the archetype may flag that unusually shaped rooms require a given number of measurements to provide accurate information, which may be overlooked by a surveyor not familiar with a given room type.

The above optional feature, where data is automatically acquired, is advantageous as it may be that a surveyor (i.e. user), such as if distracted by other concerns or unfamiliar with the data acquisition unit, will miss opportunistic occasions to acquire data. This automatically acquired data is further advantageous in that at a later stage, such as when the survey is finished, a reviewer of the data (such as at a location remote from the survey site) has an extra set of information that may answer questions not posed (or simply missed) at the time of the survey, for example. Further this feature is advantageous in that the memory of the device used to store the data is available whether or not that the data is stored, hence provided user data is not excluded by automatically acquired data there is no, or minimal, technical overhead for acquiring the additional data.

Preferably, the portable surveying device, by means of software control of an electronic processing and control block (i.e. akin to a small computer) acquires data automatically, based upon the information template, such that the memory of the hand held surveying unit is used to an extent of 90%, preferably 98% or more at the end of the survey. By example, if the user is surveying a property thought, from the template derived from the archetype, to have five rooms then the software will automatically acquire gratuitous data to fill 20% of the memory of the device in each room. Thus data can be prospectively acquired in a way that would not be possible by a surveyor alone. Further, the data density can be similarly modulated so as to best use device memory. For example, photographs could be stored at high resolution for a small property, allowing for more freedom in cropping images for final use, for a large property lower resolution could be used so as to still provide a photograph of every room without exceeding memory capacity.

For a local computer to be suitable for communication with the surveying device' it must be equipped with communications software specifically intended for operating the system and specifically the portable surveying device. The local computer for communication with the surveying device, may minimally be simply a radio, which acts as a communication conduit between the portable surveying device and the server, such as a component of an Internet, mobile telephone or network radio connection. However, in a preferred configuration the local computer is a computer such as a personal computer or laptop where the user can download data review it, modify it, and generally select and improve the data before uploading it to the server. This acts as a convenient method for removing unwanted gratuitous data, duplicate data, and the use ofjudgement by a human user were erroneous data having an known and acceptable cause can be stopped from going to the database and unnecessarily creating or modifying an archetype. Such as if a false ceiling were present in the building of the above example.

By use of the term "is for surveying buildings" of the present invention it is meant the suitability for acquisition of technical data, specifically building dimensions and optionally data such as construction materials, measurements of moisture content of materials (such as walls) and also preferably subjective data such as photographic information. Relevant technical data and measurements are as listed in the definition of the portable surveying device.

The present invention in its various aspects will now be illustrated by means of the following diagrams, in which: Figure 1 shows a schematic view of the system of the present invention; Figure 2 shows a schematic view of data connection and analysis in the system of the present invention; and Figure 3 shows a schematic view of data utilisation and analysis in the system of the present invention.

In considering the system of the present invention it is useful to realise that the system is self building. By this it is meant that data acquired from a survey is added to the system and as such will then be used later to help validate later data which is acquired. Thus the actual buildings to be surveyed by the system will continually change and the data sets against which it is compared will also change, although not necessarily continually. The system therefore, in iteratively performing its functions builds up a database of technical information that enables increasingly accurate and complete sets of further technical information to be obtained from future surveys by means of an evolving system of building archetypes.

Referring now to figure 1 which shows a schematic view of the system of the present invention. The schematic has the following features a building to be surveyed (10); a plan view of the building to be surveyed (20); a surveying device for use in the present invention (30); a digital plan of the building to be surveyed (40); a surveying device for use in the present invention (30) located in a docking station (32) and in communication with; a local computer (50) for communication with the surveying device (30); a server (60) acting as a hub of the network; a plurality of a local computers (50', 50") having a function equivalent to local computer (50); data external to the system (70) and access to by the system for optimisation of a system data model; a system data model (80) comprising at least data on a plurality of building archetypes (180, or forms); and an optional direct communication from the surveying device with system data model (80) as mediated by the server (60) (i.e. where the survey device and the (30) and the local computer (50) are one in the same device.

The system of the present invention comprises a server (60) holding a database of information which comprises a plurality of archetypes (180, 190, 200) of buildings to be surveyed(1 0), and optionally access to additional data external to the system (70) so as to supply one or more of a local computer (100) networked to the server (60) with a sub set of the data base corresponding to initially input data corresponding to a building to be surveyed (10), the sub set of the database is manipulated such that a further sub set of the archetype, in the form of an information template corresponding to one or more specific criteria, in the form of numeric values or ranges is download to a portable surveying device (30) for use by an operator in the surveying of a building to be surveyed (10), such that when surveying the building to be surveyed (10) the portable surveying device (30) provides the user with a plurality of prompts to obtain data from the building (10) and the data obtained is compared by a data processing unit in the portable surveying device to the data in the information template such that any mismatch between the data obtained and the template data result in the user being instructed to obtain further data relevant to the first data obtained.

A further advantage of the present system is that the information template enables the system to provide an estimated survey time, either from assumed constants for given tasks or, preferably from the survey time being assimilated into each building archetype.

Thus more efficient use of time can be made as a surveyor can better estimate time for each survey, thus further saving resources by giving the appropriate amount of time and information for a survey so as to prevent or reduce the need for return survey visits. The portable surveying device preferably records the time taken for the survey to facilitate these time estimates in future surveys.

In use, the system provides the user with a virtual plan (40) of the building (10), which is based in part upon the information template obtained by manipulating the archetype data.

Referring now to figure 2 which shows a schematic view of data connection and analysis in the system of the present invention. The schematic has the following features: a plurality of a data sets (100, 100' and, 100") acquired from surveying individual buildings to be surveyed (10) of a given type; an archetype (180, or form) of the given type of building being surveyed; and a plurality of characteristic's (181, 182, 183, 184) that make up the archetype of the building type as the system of the present invention is used a number of data sets (100, 100', 100") relating to a number of buildings to be surveyed (10) is calculated. The system uses data input by a user, such acts as at the local computer (50) and the data obtained using the surveying device (30) to identify one or more property archetypes (180, 190, 200 etc.) and for each property archetype (180) a number of building characteristics are identified and for each characteristic a value or range of values is allocated to each characteristic such as to form a property archetype. In this manner the system builds up a representative database of information on properties. In particular, the database preferably updates the ranges of the data over a period of time. For example, buildings in an area, all of a similar design may, for example, normally comprise 4 rooms, but over time additional rooms may be added and the archetype can thus be up dated from having a building characteristic of rooms equals 4 to a range characteristic of rooms equals 4 or 5.

Besides, what may be termed growth characteristics of an archetype, such as a number of rooms, the archetype can also provide the room dimensions at a degree of accuracy such that properties built to a standard design are known to have room dimensions for a particular room within a narrow band the system is capable of identifying the effect of, for example, subsidence such as before this would otherwise be sufficiently noticeable for a surveyor to unaided be prompted to perform additional tests to validate such a

conclusion.

In the system of the present invention when an out of range characteristic is read by the surveying device the device preferably requires the user to take a further reading to confirm the first reading and more preferably also readings in the vicinity of the first reading so as to screen for local anomalies, for example in room dimensions.

Referring now to figure 3 which shows a schematic view of data utilisation and analysis in the system of the present invention. The schematic has the following features: a system data model (80) portion (280) comprising a plurality of individual building archetypes (180, also simply termed archetypes) a data set (210) acquired from surveying a building that has been surveyed (such as 10); and a set of building archetypes (180, 190, 200) (comparable to idealised versions of data sets (100) such as those in figure 2, and also different in function).

In operation the system of the present invention first requires a user to specify details of a building to be surveyed. Details may include information on building characteristics such as geographic location, age and type of building (such as detached, terraced etc.).

Using these details the system will then use data obtained by communication between the local computer (50) and the server (60) to find a best match between the details input and an existing building archetype (180 etc) . Each building archetype (180) comprises a number of characteristics that serve to define that building type and a set of data from it is, typically defined in the form of ranges that define the normal level for each characteristic of a building of that archetype. Preferably the ranges are inter related and cross referenced, for example, the ranges for room height for a detached property will be cross reference to building age for that property type. Preferably, the archetype information retrieved by the local computer (50) is then processed to extract and define an information template comprising the relevant ranges for the property in questions (i.e. the cross references are used to remove irrelevant information). This information template is then held in the surveying device, preferably a hand held surveying device, for further use by the system when surveying a building to be surveyed (10). In this manner the surveying process is much improved in that the user is actually instructed by the apparatus to position the surveying device so that the device may obtain the information it needs to fill the template as well as providing model ranges against which to compared the data obtained so as to identify potential errors. This process enables the surveyor to be of a low skill level as they effectively acts as a transport mechanism for the hand held device. Alternatively, and a skilled surveyor may use the potable surveying device equipped with the refined archetype in the form of the information template to ensure that all the data normally relevant for a building of the type identified and to re-check information which appears erroneous. Even in this situation the device provides an improved survey as buildings of a type new to the surveyor may have already been surveyed earlier by another surveyor using another hand held device and a ready set of comparable data will enable the surveyor to more rapidly asses the importance of anomalous results. This is so in that anomalies from the archetype will warrant further investigation but apparent anomalies considered normative from the archetype would warrant less investigation and thus save time.

The terms portable device and hand held unit are used effectively as synonyms in the above description, a hand-held unit being a preferred form of portable device and a unit being a preferred device in which only a single object need to be handled. Hence, the portable device is preferably a hand-held unit.

Claims (9)

1. Claims 1. The present invention provides a system for surveying buildings, the system comprising: i) a portable surveying device equipped with software capable of creating a digital plan of the building to be surveyed (40); ii) a local computer (50) for communication with the surveying device (30); iii) a remote server (60) acting as a hub for a plurality of networked local computers (50', 50") each having a function equivalent to the local computer (50); iv) a system data model (80) comprising at least data on a plurality of building archetypes (180, or forms); vi) optional data external to the system (70) relating to parameters of technical relevance to a property survey for optimisation of a system data model; wherein the server (60) holds a database of information which comprises a plurality of archetypes (180, 190, 200) of buildings to be surveyed (10), and optionally access to said, additional, data external to the system (70) so as to, in use, supply a sub set of the data base corresponding to data relevant to a building to be surveyed based upon initially input data corresponding to a building to be surveyed (10), and wherein the sub set of the database is manipulated such that a further sub set of the archetype, in the form of an information template corresponding to one or more specific criteria in the form of numeric values or ranges of buildings measurements is download to said portable surveying device (30) for use by an operator in the surveying of a building to be surveyed (10), such that when surveying the building to be surveyed (10) the portable surveying device (30) provides the user with a plurality of prompts to obtain data from the building (10) and the data obtained is compared by a data processing unit in the portable surveying device to the data in the information template such that any mismatch between the data obtained and the template data result in the user being instructed to obtain further data relevant to the first data obtained and wherein the data obtained by the portable surveying device is fed back via the server, via the local computer so as to update the database, such as by refining and archetype or defining an archetype and to produce a survey report comprising a consolidated data set comprising the measurements taken in the form of one or more building plans.
2. 2. The system of claim 1 in which the system dynamically updates the archetypes from new survey data obtained from buildings surveyed by the system.
3. 3. The system of claim 1 or claim 2 in which the system creates new archetypes by dividing existing system archetypes when the average of two or more data ranges in the archetype differ by more than two standard deviations.
4. 4. The system of any preceding claim in which the portable surveying device equipped with a data processing means uses the data of the information template to apportion information in memory so as to fill the memory with an amount of information in anticipation of distributing memory capacity to provide space for all the measurements defined by the information template.
5. 5. The system of claim 4 wherein the data processing means determines unused memory and prospectively fills it with gratuitously acquired data within the scope of the information template.
6. 6. The system of claim 5 wherein the data processing means determines unused memory and prospectively fills it with gratuitously acquired data in addition to the scope of data defined by the information template.
7. 7. The system of any preceding claim wherein the portable surveying device, comprises: i) an electronic processing and control block; ii) a screen for displaying information to a user and an optional transducer for producing audible sound to communicate to a user; iii) means for the manual input of information by a user; iv) control block software for constructing a plan of a building; v) a data acquisition means comprising a distance measuring device for measuring distance from a first side of the device to an object remote from the device; vi) an optional data acquisition means selected from one or more of: a) a digital stills camera; b) a digital video camera; c) a conductivity meter; d) a temperature sensor; e) a light intensity meter; f) an electronic spirit level; and g) a global positioning system receiver, and vi) and input output port to send and receive data from the control block to devices external to the hand-held surveying device; wherein the control block, in use, is configured to provide prompts to a user to construct a plan of a building to be surveyed, those prompts including prompts to acquire data from the data acquisition means at points identified on the plan of the building.Amendments to the claims have been filed as follows: Claims 16 1. The present invention provides a system for surveying buildings, the system comprising: i) a portable surveying device equipped with software capable of creating a digital plan of the building to be surveyed (40); ii) a local computer (50) for communication with the surveying device (30); iii) a remote server (60) acting as a hub for a plurality of networked local computers (50', 50") each having a function equivalent to the local computer (50); iv) a system data model (80) comprising at least data on a plurality of building archetypes (180, or forms); wherein the server (60) holds a database of information which comprises a plurality of archetypes (180, 190, 200) of buildings to be surveyed (10) so as to, in use, supply a sub set of the data base corresponding to data relevant to a building to be surveyed based upon initially input data corresponding to a building to be surveyed (10), and wherein the sub set of the database is manipulated such that a further sub set of the archetype, in the form of an information template corresponding to one or more specific (Y) criteria in the form of numeric values or ranges of buildings measurements is download to said portable surveying device (30) for use by an operator in the surveying of a building to be surveyed (10), such that when surveying the building to be surveyed (10) the portable surveying device (30) provides the user with a plurality of prompts to obtain data from the building (10) and the data obtained is compared by a data processing unit in the portable surveying device to the data in the information template such that any mismatch between the data obtained and the template data result in the user being instructed to obtain further data relevant to the first data obtained and wherein the data obtained by the portable surveying device is fed back to the server, via the local computer so as to update the database, such as by refining an archetype or defining an archetype and to produce a survey report comprising a consolidated data set comprising the measurements taken in the form of one or more building plans.2. The system of claim 1 further comprising: vi) data external to the system (70) relating to parameters of technical relevance to a property survey for optimisation of a system data model; and wherein the server (60) that holds the database of information which comprises a plurality of archetypes (180, 190, 200) of buildings to be surveyed (10), has access to said, additional, data external to the system (70).3. The system of claim 1 or claim 2 in which the system dynamically updates the archetypes from new survey data obtained from buildings surveyed by the system.4. The system of any of claims 1 to 3 in which the system creates new archetypes by dividing existing system archetypes when the average of two or more data ranges in the archetype differ by more than two standard deviations.5. The system of any preceding claim in which the portable surveying device equipped with a data processing means uses the data of the information template to apportion information in memory so as to fill the memory with an amount of information in anticipation of distributing memory capacity to provide space for all the measurements defined by the information template. C)6. The system of claim 5 wherein the data processing means determines unused memory and prospectively fills it with gratuitously acquired data within the scope of the information template.7. The system of claim 6 wherein the data processing means determines unused memory and prospectively fills it with gratuitously acquired data in addition to the scope of data defined by the information template.
8. 8. The system of any preceding claim wherein the portable surveying device, comprises: i) an electronic processing and control block; ii) a screen for displaying information to a user and an optional transducer for producing audible sound to communicate to a user; iii) means for the manual input of information by a user; iv) control block software for constructing a plan of a building; v) a data acquisition means comprising a distance measuring device for measuring distance from a first side of the device to an object remote from the device; and vi) an input output port to send and receive data from the control block to devices external to the hand-held surveying device; wherein the control block, in use, is configured to provide prompts to a user to construct a plan of a building to be surveyed, those prompts including prompts to acquire data from the data acquisition means at points identified on the plan of the building.
9. 9. The system of claim 8 wherein the portable surveying device, further comprises: vii) a data acquisition means selected from one or more of: a) a digital stills camera; b) a digital video camera; c) a conductivity meter; a) d) a temperature sensor; e) a light intensity meter; f) an electronic spirit level; and g) a global positioning system receiver. C)