This document provides guidance on conducting a desktop and on-site appraisal of a potential building location. Key points include: - Conducting a thorough desktop analysis to eliminate unsuitable sites and identify potential issues to investigate further. - Assessing location factors like climate, access to materials and services, and legal/ownership considerations. - Measuring the site in detail and talking to local authorities to verify boundaries, underground infrastructure, and prior development. - Digging trial holes and boreholes to understand subsurface conditions like soil type and water table, in order to design foundations appropriately or advise against building if issues are found.

1. Notes to accompany 1014 “Site appraisal<br />Slide 2:<br />Desktop appraisal is essential. You may be able to eliminate potential sites at this stage, which can save expensive site visits and investigations. It will also highlight potential problems that you will want to investigate in detail at the site itself<br />Slides 3-5:<br />Location is crucial. This determines local climate, local politics (which authority, is it a national park? Etc.) You will also be looking at factors external to the site, such as access to building materials, local labour, local services, current and future and so on.<br />Slide 6<br />External influences on the site. Think about services, such as water, gas, electricity. Are they available for the building site? Do any services run under or over the site, which may cause problems. Water courses, flood plains, flood history. Legal covenants and easements. Are there rights of way on or over the site. Are there public rights and/or private rights? Who actually owns the land? Is there a leasehold agreement anywhere on the site.<br />Slides 8-10<br />Measure the site. However detailed maps and plans you may be given, you do not know if they are right. You will be liable for your work, so make sure it is your work. Carry out or, more likely, commission a full professional measured survey of the site. Establish exactly where boundaries, roads, trees and buildings really are. Thoroughly walk the site, looking for all indications of earlier development, ground water problems, overshadowing, restricted access or whatever. Talk to local people and authorities if possible.<br />Never make assumptions about what is or is not below the ground. Either find out what IS there, or work on the basis that you don’t know. There can be major underground works in the most unexpected places (huge gas pipes under the Brecon Beacons, power cables serving all those wind turbines you see in the countryside. )<br />Slide 11-13<br />Dig trial holes and have them inspected by engineers. Keep the holes away from the exact points you plan to build on if possible, but always have a look underground to find out about sub soils, water table, contamination. If you are not satisfied by what you see, commission borehole inspections<br />Slide 14-15<br />Boreholes are the ultimate test of what is underground. They give information right down to the bedrock. But they only tell you what was in the hole. If by chance they miss an important feature, which they can, you will not know about it. But you cannot be held liable for any concomitant problems because you have done the best that a competent surveyor could, so you will not have been negligent.<br />Slide 16<br />You are finally in a position where you can advise your client not to buy or build on the site, or to begin designing the building for the site, with the knowledge of where you can build and what you can build.<br />