Land Surveyors Editing and Proofreading Services

Two neighbours are arguing about a fence. One of them commissions a survey, receives a drawing with a line on it, and believes the matter is settled. It is not, because the line on the drawing is where the surveyor measured the physical features to be, and the boundary — the legal one — is a different kind of thing entirely, determined by deeds, by conveyancing history and sometimes by twenty years of somebody mowing.

We edit what land surveyors produce — boundary and identification survey reports, topographic and measured building survey documentation, setting out and control documentation, monitoring survey reports and their tolerances, as-built and verification survey documentation, expert reports for boundary disputes, plans and their annotation conventions, terms of engagement and scope statements, accuracy and methodology statements, and client-facing explanations of what a survey does and does not establish. Our editors work on the report a neighbour will treat as an answer.

The boundary report is the document most likely to be misunderstood by the person paying for it, and its failure is presenting measurement as determination. A surveyor can say with confidence where a fence, a wall or a feature is; whether that feature is the boundary is a question of law and evidence. We work through these so the report distinguishes at the top between what was measured and what is inferred, since a client who has not had this explained will quote the drawing as if it were a judgment; so each physical feature is described as a feature — a close-boarded fence, a wall, a hedge centre, a change in surface — with its measured position and its condition, rather than labelled boundary; so the documentary evidence considered is listed with what it does and does not show, given that a title plan drawn at 1:1250 has a line thickness worth a metre on the ground and this single fact resolves a great many disputes; so any discrepancy between the deeds, the physical features and the occupation is set out as a discrepancy rather than resolved silently in the surveyor's favour; so the accuracy of the measurement is stated, because a report giving positions to the millimetre and a boundary uncertain by a metre needs both numbers; so what would be needed to establish the legal boundary is named; and so the report says plainly that it does not determine ownership. Reports written this way are useful in a negotiation and survive being tested.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including survey data, reports and client information. We are editors rather than surveyors or legal advisers, and we offer no view on boundaries, measurements or ownership. What we can do is keep measurement and determination clearly separated.