Everything You Need to Know

Topographical Surveying Overview
Topographical surveys are often called “topo surveys” or topographic surveys, detail surveys, terrain surveys or contour surveys. These terms all refer to laser-measured surveys that gather data about natural and man-made features of your site, such as the topography and elevation of your land.
Topographical surveys will also precisely locate all salient features such as buildings, boundaries, walkways, service covers, trees, and site levels. We normally present this data digitally, in CAD format. (That’s the jargon out of the way!)
How We Work
Arbtech undertakes topographical work on a wide range of sites all over the UK. Residential, commercial and industrial developments being the mainstay of our work. Of those, we work predominantly on urban, green and brown-field sites, as well as mines, quarries and everything in between (even wilderness and nature reserves).
The topographical survey work that we provide for clients generally is to facilitate design-stage work, because designers (such as architects) require CAD format data visualisations and laser-accurate measurements of subject site/area for development.
We can carry out topographical surveys over any accessible area and we can provide them at any scale or level of detail. Topographical surveys commonly need to be tailored to your project’s specific needs or to your design team’s individual specifications — so just let us know because it’s likely we’ve been there and done that.
Benefits of Early-Stage Topographical Work
Investing in development is complex. Quick, accurate topographic surveys can help to reduce your risk significantly because of these important factors:
- Reducing costly mistakes that can arise from unseen issues.
- Giving a “full picture” of land, including off-site and near-site features that have the potential to constrain the development or present engineering difficulties, enabling more robust design work and affording some visibility of the most suitable construction methods.
- Saving you time and money by providing the design team and any consultants with information about constraints (such as trees) and levels at an early stage.
Why Work With Arbtech?
Topographical survey work is an important part of any project, and as such, it’s important that you have a trusted team on your side. With over 15 years in business and thousands of happy customers every year, you’ll find it difficult to find a more reliable partner for your project.
We’ve worked with a wide range of clients including architects, homeowners, developers and estate managers over our years in business. Many of these clients come back to Arbtech for all their projects because they know they will get outstanding customer service and high-quality work every single time.
We will take the time to thoroughly understand your needs and we will tailor our work to your specific requirements. Our proven track record and years of experience mean that we’ve seen just about every requirement you could think of, and we’ll have a solution for every kind of project.
If you’d like to find out what our customers think, just head over to our reviews page. You’ll see hundreds of genuine reviews from real clients just like you.
If you would like to go over the requirements of your project, our friendly team are waiting to help.

How Much Do Topographical Surveyors Cost?
The prices can vary quite a bit depending on the size of the site and the complexity of the project. We will be able to give you an accurate quote within 24 hours if you get in touch with us today. Generally, in mainland UK, our topographic survey prices for small sites start from £450+VAT.
How Quickly?
We can normally send a quote to you same day, and typically (unless your job is extremely large or complex) mobilise to site within a few days. Once the site work is done, the processing and QC of your drawings back at the office can take 1-2 days. So, around a week in total. For a premium, we can offer weekend surveys and get things out a bit quicker if you’re really pushed for time.
Where Do We Cover?
Arbtech has office locations in Chester, Birmingham and London, enabling our team to cost-effectively cover most of mainland UK. In fact, we’ve worked in Jersey, Guernsey, the Isle of Man, Isle of White, Northern Ireland, Ireland, and even Italy. Tell us the details of your project and we’ll let you know how much it will cost and when we can get started.
Starting Your Topographical Survey
Starting your Topographic survey is really simple. Just give our team a call on the number above or ask us for a free quote via our website. We’ll take some details off you and put a simple, no-nonsense, and no-obligation quote together for you.
If you are happy with it, simply complete and return our 1-page survey booking form. Then, we’ll allocate you a project manager and get cracking!
What Makes Us Different?
Arbtech has been providing no-nonsense, fast, efficient, and affordable surveys to a wide range of clients for over 15 years. Our experience is unmatched and our unique business model is set up to allow the majority of our surveyors (all full-time, direct employees) to be based at home. This means that we reduce our overheads, and passing these savings on to you, we are more competitive at what we do.
We also work very hard to attract the best people in the business, which means that you get a top quality service from friendly experts who love what they do.
What Do Our Clients Say?
We have hundreds of genuine 5 star reviews. No other consultancy comes close to the number of positive reviews we’ve gained over the years.
Here is just 1 recent example: