How do I look through a surveying firm’s archive of field notes and past plans?

Test by retrieval. Pick jobs from different periods and ask for the field notes, the calculation files and the finished plan for each. Note whether the pieces connect: can you tell which notes produced which plan? Handwritten notes, digital data collector files and plotted drawings should all be traceable to a job number.

Look at condition. Are older paper notes legible and protected from damp and fire? Are digital files stored in formats that can still be opened? Ask whether anything lives only on one person’s laptop. Find out how the archive is indexed, who updates it and whether there is an offsite backup.

Then ask how the firm uses its archive. Past records can save fieldwork on later jobs, so ask how often staff consult them and how long that takes. Your lawyer can explain what record-keeping duties come with the firm and what a buyer takes on, and your insurance broker can discuss the exposure that old work carries. Ask, too, whether the firm has ever been asked to defend an old job from its records. How the staff recall that experience, and how well the archive held up, is useful evidence of its quality in practice rather than in theory.

Key takeaways

• Pull several jobs from different periods and check that notes link to plans.
• Inspect the condition and backup of both paper and digital records.
• Ask your lawyer what record duties a buyer would inherit.