Sheet AD 148 Cwm Aderyn 1:10 000 OSGB36 / ODN Caernarfon
GRATICULE Land & Hydrographic Survey

Caernarfon · Gwynedd · Est. 2009

Everything you build starts from a measurement.

GRATICULE is a chartered survey practice working the coast and uplands of north-west Wales. We establish where the ground actually is — to the millimetre where that matters, and honestly about it where it doesn’t — and hand the design team something they can build on.

Cost a survey What we survey

RICS regulated TSA member 17 staff 1,900+ jobs

Sheet AD 148 Cwm Aderyn & Llyn Aderyn Contour interval 10 m
Grid AD · 250 m graticule Levels to ODN Hover the sheet for a reading Drag station A or B to cut a section
Section Across the cwm

A  →  B  ·  drag either station on the sheet, or focus it and use the arrow keys.

01 — What we do

Eight things, done properly.

A survey practice that claims everything usually subcontracts most of it. This is the list we hold in-house, with our own instruments and our own people, and it is the list we will quote against.

01

Topographic survey

Detail and levels across open ground, from a half-hectare infill plot to a forty-hectare coastal realignment. Delivered as a survey-grade DWG with a separate levelled surface, not a flat drawing with spot heights typed on.

OS grid or site grid1:200 to 1:1000±15 mm typical
02

Measured building survey

Plans, sections and elevations of what is actually standing, including the parts that are out of plumb. Historic fabric is scanned before it is drawn, so the drawing can be checked against the cloud rather than against memory.

Level 1 to Level 4Revit or DWGListed-building experience
03

Terrestrial laser scanning

Registered point clouds for retrofit, clash detection and record. We publish the registration report with the cloud, so you can see the residual on every setup instead of taking the alignment on trust.

E57 & RCPRegistered < 4 mmPanoramic imagery
04

Bathymetric & hydrographic survey

Single-beam and multibeam work in the estuaries and harbours along this coast, tied to the same datum as the land survey so the two halves of a sea wall meet in the middle. Tidal reduction from our own gauge, not an assumed curve.

IHO Order 1aReduced to ODN & CDVessel to 8 m
05

UAV photogrammetry

Aerial capture where ground access is slow, unsafe or would take a week — quarry faces, roofs, forestry tracks, active earthworks. Always flown against ground control, because a flight without it is a picture, not a survey.

CAA operational authorisationOrthomosaic & DSM±25 mm to control
06

Setting out & as-built

Control networks, setting out to the design model, and the as-built check that proves what went in. We keep the network adjusted for the life of the job, so month eleven is measured from the same points as week one.

Least-squares adjustedSame-day as-builtsDeviation reporting
07

Structural monitoring

Movement watched over months on retaining structures, quay walls and buildings next to deep excavation, with agreed trigger levels and a named person who phones when one is crossed rather than emailing a spreadsheet.

Automated or periodicSub-millimetre precisionAmber & red triggers
08

Utility detection to PAS 128

Electromagnetic and GPR detection of what is already under the site, surveyed in and stated at a quality level you can plan around. A drawing that quietly mixes QL-B and QL-D is worse than no drawing.

QL-D to QL-B2GPR & EMLLevelled & attributed

02 — Accuracy

How close is close enough?

Nobody needs every job at three millimetres, and paying for it when you don’t is the most common waste in this industry. The honest answer depends on what the measurement is going to decide.

These are the working tolerances of the instruments we run, at the ranges we actually run them — not the headline figure off the brochure.

The instrument list

Precise levelling 1–2 mm
Total station 1–3 mm
Laser scan @ 50 m 2–6 mm
GNSS RTK, plan 8–15 mm
GNSS RTK, height 15–25 mm
UAV @ 60 m 20–35 mm
Multibeam @ 12 m 25–50 mm
1 mm31030100

Logarithmic scale. Figures are one sigma against site control, over a full working day, in the weather this coast actually has.


04 — How a job runs

Six stages, and you hear from us at each one.

The order matters. Most survey disputes are really control disputes, and control is established before anyone measures a single point of detail.

01

Brief

What the survey has to decide, who receives it, and in which software it has to open.

02

Recon

A walk-over before a price. Access, sightlines, tides, livestock, and what the site is hiding.

03

Control

A network observed and least-squares adjusted, with witness diagrams, before any detail.

04

Field

Detail, levels, scans and soundings, checked into the network as they are collected.

05

Adjust

Reduction, adjustment and a residual report. If something did not close, you are told.

06

Deliver

Drawing, model and report together, with the control schedule so the next firm can pick it up.

05 — The archive

Every job is a sheet, and we keep it.

Nineteen hundred jobs since 2009 are held as adjusted networks with their raw observations, not as flattened PDFs. When a client comes back seven years later because a boundary is being argued or an extension is going in, we re-issue from the original data on the original datum.

It also means a repeat visit is cheaper than a first one, sometimes by half: the control is already there, already witnessed, and still adjusts.

Held since
March 2009
Jobs archived
1,912
Retention
Indefinite, with raw observations
Re-issue
Two working days, typical
Datum
OSGB36 / ODN, or your site grid

Cost a survey See the work