As-Built Surveys in El Cerrito, CA

El Cerrito's east side climbs into the hills on postwar homes that were built quickly on sloping ground — split-level plans, stepped foundations, living space over garages — and the Hayward fault runs close enough that seismic retrofitting is a fact of life here. Retrofit engineers need to know exactly what they are strengthening: cripple-wall heights that change along the slope, foundation steps, how far floors have already drifted out of level. Our Trimble terrestrial laser scanner captures all of that in one visit, producing a survey-grade point cloud from which we deliver dimensioned plans, sections, elevations, and floor-flatness exhibits in DWG/DXF, plus Revit models at LOD 200 or 300 or the raw E57/RCP cloud on request.

The city's geology gives as-built documentation a second, distinctly local role. In the Blakemont area near the Kensington border, a slow-moving landslide has been creeping for decades, and elsewhere on the east side creeping slopes gradually rack structures and lean retaining walls. A scan is a truthful snapshot of a building's present geometry — which walls are out of plumb and by how much, where floors have tilted — and a repeat scan later quantifies change with millimeter-level sensitivity. Owners and engineers who suspect movement often pair the as-built with ongoing monitoring so decisions rest on measured displacement rather than impressions. Because the entire structure lives in the point cloud, any dimension the engineer needs later is extracted at the desk; nobody crawls back under the house.

El Cerrito is in Contra Costa County, so when a project extends to boundary retracement or a record of survey — common where creeping ground has shifted fences off line — filings are made with the Contra Costa County Surveyor and Recorder, and any disturbed monuments are handled under Business and Professions Code section 8771.