As-Built Surveys in Alameda, CA

The island of Alameda holds one of the Bay Area's largest concentrations of intact Victorian and Edwardian houses, most of them on the older narrow lots of the original street grid — and almost none of them come with usable drawings. Owners planning remodels, additions, or conversions of these homes need existing-conditions documentation that respects how the buildings actually stand after 120 years, including settlement on the bay-fill margins where liquefaction-prone soils have moved foundations unevenly. Our Trimble terrestrial laser scanner captures an entire Victorian — ornate porch, bay windows, turned posts and all — in a single visit, producing a point cloud accurate to millimeters.

From the cloud we draft floor plans, building sections, and street-facing elevations in DWG/DXF, or build Revit models at LOD 200 or 300 for design teams working in BIM. Detailed elevations matter in Alameda, where exterior alterations to older homes draw close review and the trim you are matching is nowhere in any record. For owners converting a Victorian duplex or triplex to condominiums, our as-built floor plans become the basis of the condominium plan, and the associated condominium conversion mapping proceeds under the Subdivision Map Act and the Davis-Stirling Act, with maps filed through the Alameda County Surveyor and Recorder.

Alameda Point adds a different kind of as-built work: former Naval Air Station hangars, barracks, and industrial buildings entering reuse, many with only partial Navy-era drawings. These large, open structures are ideal scanning subjects — one setup sequence documents trusses, mezzanines, and utilities without lifts — and anything a tenant's architect later asks about is pulled from the cloud without a return mobilization to the island.