Heritage condition survey software
Heritage work is judged against the last visit. A conservation architect, a registrar or a maritime archaeologist is rarely asked “what is this like?” and almost always asked “what has changed, and does it matter to the significance of the place?”. Answering that means comparing element to element, round to round — which is miserable to do with last year’s Word file open beside this year’s photographs.
The reports under this heading are more different than they look. A building conservation report grades fabric against a conservation management plan. A museum object report records a single item’s condition before it travels and again when it arrives. A cemetery survey is a register of hundreds of graves, each with an inscription, a material and a stability risk. Shipwreck and rock art monitoring are long-term programmes where the same points are photographed from the same positions for years. What they share is the structure SurveyThanks is built around: elements entered once, observations that point back at them on every visit, and a report rendered into your own template from those rows.
Enter your fabric elements and spaces once
Each observation points at a stored element, so this year’s condition report can be assembled element by element against the last one instead of read side by side by a human.
What goes in your reference library
- The Burra Charter and its practice notes
- State heritage office condition assessment guidelines
- AICCM standards for collection and object condition work
- Conservation management plans for the places you monitor
- Your own condition grading scale and photographic protocol
Reviewed before it leaves
Your own checklist and prose standards, run against the finished report — with findings graded info, minor or major, quoting the sentence at fault. Because the structured submission behind the report is held too, the review catches contradictions between the two: The narrative says the verandah is stable; the condition record grades it poor and deteriorating.
9 report types in heritage
- Archaeological site monitoringSite monitoring reportHeritage consultants
- Ghost sign documentationSign documentation reportHeritage groups
- Heritage building condition surveysConservation condition reportHeritage architects
- Historic cemetery surveysGrave condition surveyHistorical societies
- Indigenous heritage surveysCultural heritage reportTraditional owners
- Museum object condition reportsObject condition reportMuseums
- Rock art condition monitoringRock art condition reportLand councils
- Shipwreck site inspectionsWreck site reportMaritime heritage
- Statue and monument auditsMonument condition registerCouncils
Standards the report works to
- Burra Charter (2013)The Australia ICOMOS Charter for Places of Cultural Significance
- The vocabulary and process most Australian conservation reporting is written in — significance first, then condition, then policy.
- Underwater Cultural Heritage Act 2018 (Cth)Protection of shipwrecks, sunken aircraft and other underwater cultural heritage
- The legal frame a wreck site inspection reports into, including protected zones and permits.
- Heritage Act 1977 (NSW)State listing, approvals and archaeological permits in New South Wales
- Cited for work on State Heritage Register items and relics; other states have their own equivalent Acts.
Load the standards you hold into your reference library and the drafted prose is written against them rather than against a general model.
Questions
- Can this year’s condition grades sit beside last year’s in the report?
- Yes. Elements, graves, objects or monitoring points are held as a register, and each inspection’s observations link to those stored rows. The template can then lay out the previous grade, the current grade and the change for every element without anyone copying values across by hand.
- We use our own condition scale. Do we have to adopt yours?
- There is no built-in scale. You define the grades as options on the form, and each option can carry its own report sentence, so “Poor” in the field becomes your full house wording in the document.
- Does it work at remote sites, in basements or on a boat?
- The day’s jobs, forms and map tiles can be downloaded before leaving, and form entries, photos, notes and voice recordings are held on the device until the server acknowledges them. Rendering the finished report happens back in coverage.
- Is it a collection management system?
- No. It captures inspections and produces the reports. Your catalogue, accession records and loan agreements stay in the system you use for them; object and site identifiers can be imported as a register so condition records point at them.
Other disciplines
Bring your heritage template
Your letterhead, your section order, your clause library — with the drafted prose landing where the template says it should.