Scan to BIM

A coordinated model of the building as it stands, built on the registered survey. Not a redraw of the original design, and not a model with the existing structure guessed at behind the new work.

For an existing building that distinction decides whether the model is useful. A model that disagrees with the site is worse than no model, because people trust it.

Agreed with you before work starts, and it is the decision that sets the cost. A model for spatial coordination and a model for asset management are different quantities of work on the same building.

We would rather have that conversation at the start than deliver a model at a detail nobody specified. Tell us what the model is for and what has to be done with it downstream, and the scope follows from that.

The survey and the model are done by the same team. That matters more than it sounds: when a modeller has a question about what the scan shows, it goes to the people who were standing there.

It also means the capture is planned around the model. Density and scan positions are decided knowing what will have to be modelled from them, rather than discovered afterwards to be insufficient.

Refurbishment, where new work has to be coordinated into an existing shell. Services coordination, where the routes have to clear structure that is already in place. Extensions and additions, where the new has to meet the old at a real dimension.

And asset records, where an owner needs a reliable model of a building that has never had one.