Surveyor stories

Hi Reader

Twenty-seven guest episodes into the This is Surveying podcast and I want to take a moment to tell you about something I have noticed that I think matters.

I started This Is Surveying last November. The plan was simple. Talk to surveyors. Let them tell their own stories. See what would surface in a slower, longer, relaxed conversation. Not stuffy, not corporate.

I have now sat with twenty-three guests across various disciplines. Residential, commercial, party wall, building surveying, valuation, marine, drone, geospatial, dilapidations, retrofit, rail freight, conservation. Apprentices in their early twenties. Surveyors who have been doing this for over thirty years.

Almost nobody planned to be a surveyor. Guests have come into the profession from teaching, from the trades, from sculpture, from the army, from accountancy, from estate agency, from the railways. Every guest has a moment in their story where they had to decide whether they belonged in a profession they had not set out to join.

The work is far more emotional than the public, the clients, or the profession itself acknowledges. Surveyors walk into homes during divorces, bereavements and serious illness. They take phone calls from small business owners in tears about a dilapidations claim they cannot pay. They hold the situation while two neighbours fall out about a wall.

The technical training is necessary but rarely the thing that makes a great surveyor great. Every guest who reflects on what made them good in the end says some version of the same thing. Communication. Listening. Reading a room. Holding a difficult conversation.

The work is lonely. Solo travel, solo inspections, solo decisions, solo report writing, solo professional risk. The pride surveyors take in their independence is real. But the cost of that independence is rarely named.

This is what the podcast is for. To give the profession a place where the actual shape of the work is discussed openly, making the people behind the profession visible.

If you haven't listened yet, you can find episodes here as we now add all episodes onto the Surveyors UK website. Over time we will switch on the HQ dashboard feature so episodes will pull into your dashboard (for registered members) based on what you are interested in. More on this soon.

Partners providing tools and support for the profession

A surveyor operating system that connects mobile inspections, report building, desktop research, CRM, client portals and secure document storage in one place. Built specifically for surveying workflow, with an independent mobile app for site inspections that feeds into a Report Builder back at the desk.

Real-time deformation monitoring platform built for surveying, geotechnical and structural monitoring work. A compact image-based sensor and cloud platform deliver continuous, millimetre-accurate displacement data, reducing the need for repeat site visits on tunnels, bridges, construction sites and structural health monitoring projects.

The CRM and Survey Management System for surveyors. It handles lead management, terms signing, payments, calendar management, report writing flows and compliance, with deep automation and integrations across the surveying tech stack.

The marketplace is the growing engine underneath Surveyors UK. It connects surveyors to the people genuinely building for them. Worth a browse if you have not been through it lately. Browse all partners. ​

Until next week

Nina

Helping surveyors navigate change.

​