Should I have the building physically measured (field verified)? Aren’t the construction drawings reliable enough to calculate the square footages?
The most common misconception of our clients is their reliance on construction documents alone for accurate square footage calculations and measurements of their building or tenant suites. In all commercial buildings, the construction drawings differ from the actual building constructed. This is due to the different interpretation of construction documents and changes made during construction. Typical architectural drawings are generally produced and printed at 1/8″ scale. If you were to measure from a 1/8″ scale drawing, an error the size of a pencil width could translate into thousands of incorrectly measured square footage. Most contemporary construction documents do not have the complete details necessary to utilize them for measurement purposes. This is particularly evident with glass line locations, which are critical for measurement purposes of square footage, yet are often shown as only graphic representation on most architectural drawings. Improvement in survey procedures over
