Recording Existing Conditions Before a Renovation Starts
Before the strip-out starts, capture the room once so the whole team can walk it again. How to record existing conditions in 3D, and what the record is good for afterwards.
The ceiling void was opened on Tuesday, the beam was not where the drawings said, and nobody can say what the room looked like on Monday. Photos exist, somewhere, taken for a different reason. This is the problem that existing conditions documentation is meant to prevent, and it only works if the record is made before anyone touches the room.
What a missing record of existing conditions costs
Renovation and fit-out run on assumptions about the existing conditions. The drawings are old, the survey covers the structure and not the finishes, and the person who walked the building at tender is not the person managing the strip-out.
The costs arrive late and look small. A second site visit to check one dimension. An argument over whether a crack was there before the work started. A joinery order that has to be remade because a wall was 40 mm out and the sheet photographed in the survey only showed the wall straight on.
A photo set answers the question the photographer was asking on the day. Three months later someone asks a different question, and the photos do not cover it.
What a walkable record changes
A 3D record of the existing conditions captures the room as continuous surfaces rather than as the viewpoints somebody chose. Anyone on the team can open it later and look at the side of the column, the underside of the stair or the back of the service riser, none of which was on anyone's shot list.
A point cloud does this accurately but reads as a field of dots to anyone outside the survey team. Captures Studio reconstructs captures as Gaussian Splat scenes, which read as continuous photoreal surfaces, so a client or site manager sees the space rather than a diagram of it. The scene opens from a link on a phone, tablet or desktop, with no app and no software on the receiving end.
It does not replace a measured survey where the design needs a tolerance. It is the record of how things looked, and a scene scaled to a known reference can be measured in place for the everyday questions. For how that works, see scale and measure in a 3D capture.
The workflow
The sequence below suits a pre-renovation survey of one floor or one tenancy. It assumes the space is empty enough to walk, but not yet stripped.
Stage 1: choose the capture route
Pick the input the team already has.
- Phone video (MP4 or MOV) works for a room-by-room pass. See video to 3D.
- 360 footage from an Insta360, Ricoh Theta or GoPro Max covers a corridor or open floor plate quickly. See 360 to 3D.
- LiDAR data in E57, LAS, LAZ or PLY is worth using when a scanner is already booked for the measured survey. Captures Studio handles that as a managed service: send the scan, receive a hosted 3D scene. See LiDAR to 3D.
Mixed routes are normal. A scanner for the structural bay and a phone for the cupboard under the stairs is a reasonable day.
Stage 2: place a reference of known length
Fix a tape measure to a wall, or use a door of known height, or a printed marker with a stated length. It goes in view before you start recording, in every room you want to measure in.
Without it the scene has no real-world size. With it, the scene can be scaled and distances read off in 3D. Do not quote an accuracy for the result. The precision depends on the reference and the capture, and no tolerance is published.
Stage 3: walk the room in one continuous pass
Move slowly and keep overlap high. Hold at doorways so the camera sees both sides. Go along the wall-to-ceiling junction, where services and bulkheads hide. Then repeat at a lower height, around knee level, to catch skirting, pipe runs and floor edges.
Avoid people moving through the frame, and open all the doors you can. A 10 minute walk of a single office floor is a sensible budget. For photo-based capture, how many photos for a Gaussian splat covers coverage in more detail.
Stage 4: process in the cloud
Upload the footage. Processing runs in the cloud, takes 10 to 120 minutes depending on the input, and needs no local GPU or installed software. Start it before leaving site, so a gap can be re-walked the same afternoon rather than a week later.
Stage 5: check before strip-out begins
Open the scene on a phone and fly through it. Look for floaters, thin patches, and areas the camera never reached. This is the checkpoint that matters, because the room is about to stop existing. If the ceiling void, riser or plant room is thin, capture it again now.
Stage 6: annotate and share
Add hotspots to anything the team will argue about later, since existing conditions are what disputes turn on: an existing crack, a floor level change, a cut-off valve, the location of the live conduit. Hotspots carry text, images, video and links. Guided camera paths give the contractor a set tour per room.
Then share one link, an embed or a QR code. Pin the QR code to the site hoarding or the project folder. The editor handles the annotation step in the browser.
Stage 7: file it as the dated baseline
Name the scene with the date and the zone, as a dated baseline for the project. Treat the existing conditions scene like a signed-off survey drawing: one version, referenced in the contract file, not edited afterwards. If work is captured again at later stages, Multi Splat can align two scenes and compare them, which turns the baseline into a before-and-after check. The build itself is covered in 3D construction progress monitoring. This post covers only the record made before work starts.
If a soft strip-out will happen first, capture before and after it. Partitions and ceilings that disappear in the first week are exactly what a later dispute is about.
Who uses the record and when
| Role | What they do with the scene |
|---|---|
| Architect | Checks the design against the room without a repeat visit. |
| Fit-out contractor | Prices from the scene, and confirms access routes and obstructions. |
| Project manager | Settles "was it like that before" without a site walk. |
| Client | Walks the space from a link, before and during the work. |
How it compares with how the job is done today
| Criterion | Photos and notes | Measured survey alone | 3D capture as the record |
|---|---|---|---|
| Time on site | Short, but gaps appear later | Depends on scope and access | A single walk per area |
| Deliverable | A folder of images | Drawings or point cloud | A walkable scene, openable from a link |
| Who can open it | Anyone | Usually the survey team | Anyone with a browser |
| Cost of redoing a missed area | A return visit | A return visit | A return visit, though fewer are needed |
| Answers questions nobody asked | Rarely | Within what was measured | Yes, from any angle captured |
Objections
"Our surveyor already does this."
A measured survey gives you dimensions and it should stay, so keep it. The 3D record is the visual layer on top of it. Surveyors who already hold scan data can pass it through the LiDAR route and hand the client something they can actually read.
"It will not be accurate enough to build from."
Correct, treat it as a record and a reference, not as a setting-out source. A scene scaled from a known reference supports in-scene measurement for everyday checks. No tolerance is published, so anything that has to hit a number goes back to the surveyor's instrument.
"Nobody on site wants another system."
The recipient opens a link. There is no login, app or training, and it works on the phone already in their pocket. The person who needs to learn something is whoever does the capture, and that is a morning.
"What happens to the data?"
It is yours: the scene is shared by link, embed or QR code on your terms, and enterprise teams can use a white-labelled viewer under their own brand and domain.
FAQ
How long does a 3D capture of a room take?
A single office floor or apartment is typically a walk of around ten minutes with a phone or 360 camera. Cloud processing then takes 10 to 120 minutes depending on the input. Plan the capture earlier in the day, so gaps can be fixed before leaving site.
What should be recorded before a fit-out starts?
When recording existing conditions, cover every room, plus the places that get hidden or destroyed first: ceiling voids, risers, plant rooms and floor edges. Include a reference of known length in each zone. Add hotspots for defects, live services and anything that is likely to be questioned later.
Does a 3D record replace a measured survey?
No. It sits beside one. The survey provides dimensions to a stated tolerance, and the 3D record provides context, appearance and everyday measurement from a scaled scene. Use both when the design depends on exact geometry.
Where this leaves the project file
The strip-out will remove most of the existing conditions, and the contract file should hold something better than a folder of photographs. A scene made in an afternoon, dated, annotated and shared by link answers the Tuesday question before it is asked: what was here on Monday, and where exactly was it.