What Are As-Built Drawings, and What Do They Cost?
As-built drawings document a building as it exists today. What they include, when you need them, and why the cheapest option often costs the most.
An as-built drawing documents a building as it exists right now.
That sounds obvious until you see how often it is not true of the drawings people already have. Commercial spaces change hands. Walls move, doors get added, a restroom gets reconfigured, a wall gets opened up for a previous tenant’s layout. The drawing in the landlord’s file describes a building that stopped existing three tenants ago.
What is typically shown
For a small commercial suite, an as-built floor plan commonly includes:
- Overall and room dimensions
- Wall locations and thicknesses
- Door and window locations, including door swing
- Restroom layout and fixtures
- Room labels and use
- Areas
- Columns and structural elements that are visible
- Fixed equipment, where relevant to the project
Level of detail is a scope decision, not a fixed standard. A drawing for contractor pricing and a drawing supporting occupancy documentation are not necessarily the same drawing, which is why the scope should be settled in writing before anyone starts.
When you need one
- Occupancy documentation. You are asked to show the existing layout and intended use.
- Tenant improvement work. Your designer or contractor needs a base drawing to work from.
- Contractor pricing. Accurate quantities require an accurate plan.
- Lease exhibits and square footage. You want to verify what you are renting or leasing out.
- Records. You own or manage the property and there is no reliable documentation of it.
How pricing actually works
Industry pricing for this work is commonly expressed per square foot, and it varies substantially by scope and complexity. Published market benchmarks generally place simple retail and office 2D as-built work at the low end, mid-complexity commercial higher, and complex or multi-story work with mechanical detail higher still.
Separately, there is a much cheaper category: drafting only. Someone converts data you supply into a drawing. Nobody visits your building.
Those are not the same product, and comparing them on price is the mistake that costs people money. In the drafting-only version you are carrying all the accuracy risk yourself. If the drawing does not match the building, you find out at review or at inspection, which is the most expensive possible moment to find out.
The measuring is the part that carries the risk. It is also the part that has to happen locally, by someone who will stand behind it.
The one question worth asking any provider
Ask who is physically going to the building, and what happens if the drawing turns out not to match it.
The answer tells you what you are actually buying.
Getting one in San Antonio
We measure commercial spaces in San Antonio on site, then produce clean documentation in PDF and CAD. If you want a real number rather than a range, send the address, the approximate square footage and what the drawings are for.
We do not claim survey-grade accuracy, because that term describes licensed surveying work. What we produce is accurate existing-conditions documentation for the uses described above, and we will tell you plainly if your project needs something we are not the right provider for.