The as-built scanning process, start to finish.
Our as-built scanning process runs the same five phases on every project, from an 800 sq ft cottage to a 250,000 sq ft industrial facility. Scope, capture, register, produce, deliver. The duration changes with the building; the structure doesn't.
Five phases in the as-built scanning process. Every project. No exceptions.
Refined over hundreds of buildings. The duration scales with the site; the structure never changes. Here's exactly what happens, when, and what you get at each step.
Scope & fixed-fee quote
Tell us the project basics — square footage, number of levels, deliverable formats, deadline. That's it. No discovery-call runaround, no three-week qualification process, no vague "let's schedule a call to discuss your needs."
Within 24 hours, a fixed-fee proposal lands in your inbox: scope, deliverables, formats, accuracy spec, schedule, and price. Sign it and we book the field crew. If we're not the right fit for the project, we'll tell you that instead.
- Square footage — rough is fine
- Levels & scope — interior, exterior, both
- Deliverables — plans, model, twin, or all
- Deadline — permit date, design milestone
- Existing drawings — optional, even bad ones help
On-site capture
A certified technician arrives with a Matterport Pro3 and scans the building. Most sites take 4–8 hours. Scanning is non-disruptive — LiDAR is its own light source, so we work around occupants, active operations, and normal business hours without asking anyone to leave.
Every scan position is recorded and logged. For sensitive environments — hospitals, data centers, retail floors — night and weekend capture is available at no premium. See our 3D laser scanning page for the technical detail.
- Site access — keys, badge, or escort
- Point of contact — someone reachable on the day
- Areas of interest — anything easy to miss
- Restricted zones — anything we can't enter
- Nothing else — no prep, no clearing rooms
Registration & validation
Scan positions get stitched into a single unified point cloud. This is the step nobody outside the industry thinks about and everybody inside it worries about — bad registration produces a dataset that looks fine and measures wrong.
The registered cloud is validated against control points before a single line gets drafted. If validation fails, we re-scan at our cost. We've done it; we'd rather absorb a return trip than ship a dataset we don't trust.
- Registration — scan positions unified
- Cleaning — noise, people, transient objects
- Validation — checked against control points
- Tolerance check — 20mm or we re-scan
- Registration report — the audit trail
Drafting & modeling
Our drafters and BIM modelers build your deliverables from the registered cloud. To your standards — your titleblock, your layer system, your Revit family library, your specified LOD. Send us your template and the files drop straight into your environment with no rework.
Same dataset, many outputs: 2D as-built plans, a Revit BIM model up to LOD 300, a walkable digital twin, or all three. Because everything derives from one capture, the deliverables stay coordinated with each other automatically.
- 2D CAD — DWG, DXF, PDF
- BIM model — RVT, IFC, NWD (to LOD 300)
- Digital twin — walkable, shareable URL
- Point cloud — RCP, E57, LAS, PTS
- Your standards — titleblock, layers, families
QA & delivery
Internal QA cross-checks every dimension against the scan dataset before anything leaves the office. Then you receive the finished files, plus the registered point cloud — so you can verify any dimension yourself, independently, at any point in the future.
A 30-minute walkthrough call comes with it. We open the deliverables on a shared screen, walk your team through the file structure, and answer questions. The recording gets sent after. And the files are yours — no proprietary viewer, no portal, no lock-in.
- Finished deliverables — in your formats
- Registered point cloud — yours forever
- QA & accuracy report — the audit trail
- Matterport link — walkable, shareable
- Walkthrough call — 30 min, recorded
Four things hold on every project in the as-built scanning process. Non-negotiable.
Fixed fee, stated up front
Scope, deliverables, and price are locked before work begins. Change orders happen — buildings are messy — but only with your written approval, never as a surprise on the invoice.
20mm tolerance, validated
Every dataset is checked against control points before drafting starts. If it doesn't validate, we re-scan at our cost rather than ship something we don't trust.
Open formats, no lock-in
DWG, RVT, IFC, RCP, E57, LAS. No proprietary viewers, no portal-only access. If you switch vendors next year, your data goes with you.
Published turnaround
5–7 days for most projects under 10,000 sq ft. We don't promise turnaround we can't hit — and we'll tell you on the first call if your deadline isn't realistic.
What we need — and what you can skip.
Most clients over-prepare for a scan. The list is shorter than you'd think, and the things you're worried about mostly don't matter.
Four things, that's it
Everything below can be sorted with a single email. If you have all four, we can be on site inside two weeks.
- Site access. Keys, badge, gate code, or an escort. Whatever gets our tech through the door.
- A point of contact. Someone reachable by phone on the scan day, in case something unexpected comes up.
- Areas of interest. Anything easy to overlook — a crawlspace, a mechanical mezzanine, a locked closet that matters.
- Restricted zones. Anywhere we shouldn't go: secure areas, tenant spaces, active hazards.
Things that don't matter
Clients routinely apologize for these. None of them affect the scan or the deliverable.
- Cleaning up. We scan around clutter, furniture, and stored materials. The building is what it is.
- Clearing people out. Occupants can keep working. LiDAR handles movement; transient objects get cleaned in processing.
- Turning on lights. LiDAR is its own light source. We can scan a pitch-black basement.
- Finding old drawings. Helpful for orientation, but never required. We measure what's there, not what a drawing claims.
Questions about the as-built scanning process.
Don't see yours? Contact us — we usually respond same day. Or browse our services.
How long does the whole process take?
Do we need to close the building or vacate during the scan?
What do you need from us before the scan?
How accurate is the as-built scanning process?
Can we change scope mid-project?
What happens if a deliverable is wrong?
Start the process today.
Tell us the square footage, the deliverables, and the deadline. A fixed-fee proposal comes back within 24 hours.
Leading provider of 3D Scanning services, specializing in residential, commercial, and industrial projects.