Conservation condition report software for heritage buildings
A heritage building condition survey walks the place element by element — roof, walls, joinery, finishes, services — and grades each against both its physical state and its significance under the conservation management plan. The owner and the heritage authority want a prioritised works schedule they can fund and approve. The architect wants every recommendation to trace back to fabric that was actually seen. SurveyThanks keeps each fabric element as a stored row, so the condition schedule, the photographs and the works priorities are produced from the same record.
Built for heritage architects running teams of roughly 3–50 inspectors.
Sample Conservation condition report
An illustrative excerpt. The site, readings and findings are fictional; the layout is yours to set.
Conservation condition report
Element schedule — Verandah and front elevation
- Place
- Fictional Cottage, Example Lane (State listed)
- Survey round
- Annual — 2026
- Grading
- Good / Fair / Poor / Very poor
| Element | Significance | Observation | Condition |
|---|---|---|---|
| Verandah posts (cast iron) | High | Surface rust at bases of P2 and P3; sound | Condition: Fair |
| Verandah floor (hardwood) | Moderate | Two boards soft at the eastern end; rot probed 30 mm | Condition: Poor |
| Front door and fanlight | High | Original glazing intact; putty cracked | Condition: Fair |
| Brick façade (tuckpointed) | High | No change since 2025; no cementitious repairs | Condition: Good |
Fields captured on site
Your firm builds the form in-app, so these are a starting point rather than a fixed schema. Every field is captured on the device, with or without signal, and lands in the conservation condition report where your template puts it.
Per fabric element
- Element and location
- Material
- Significance grade (from the CMP)
- Condition grade
- Change since last round
- Photographs with captions
Recommendations
- Linked element(s)
- Works description
- Priority (urgent / 1 year / 5 years)
- Approval pathway
- Indicative cost band
Survey context
- Weather on the day
- Areas not accessed and why
- Previous report reference
Standards the report works to
- Burra Charter (2013)The Australia ICOMOS Charter for Places of Cultural Significance
- Recommendations are framed by its principles — do as much as necessary and as little as possible.
- Kerr, The Conservation PlanA guide to the preparation of conservation plans for places of European cultural significance
- The structure most conservation management plans follow, and so the significance grades the survey reads against.
Load the standards you hold into your reference library and the drafted prose is written against them rather than against a general model.
How the conservation condition report gets built
Capture it once, offline
Your firm builds the heritage building condition survey form in-app — 25 field types, nesting repeatable groups, compound AND/OR visibility rules, reusable modules and calculated fields. Field capture works with no signal: jobs, forms, photos, notes and audio all queue in an idempotent outbox that only clears once the server confirms receipt.
Link it to your fabric elements and spaces
Enter fabric elements and spaces once, as a register. Every one of your condition observations across inspection rounds then points at a stored row rather than a name somebody typed — and the links survive a disconnected device.
Render your own template
The conservation condition report renders into the Word template you already use — your letterhead, your section order, your clause library — with conditionals, loops over repeats, composable sub-templates and photo grids.
Reviewed before it leaves
You write the review framework: a checklist of what a conservation condition report must contain, plus the prose standards you would mark a junior against. Link it to a report template and it runs every time that template renders. Each finding comes back graded info, minor or major, quoting the sentence at fault, and a person accepts or dismisses every one.
Because the structured submission behind the report is held too, the review is a comparison rather than a proofread: The narrative says the verandah is stable; the condition record grades it poor and deteriorating.
Checks a heritage framework usually carries
- Every element in the schedule carries a condition grade and a photograph
- Change since the last inspection is stated element by element
- Recommendations are tied back to Burra Charter principles
- The significance assessment is consistent with the conservation management plan
Questions
- Can one recommendation cover several elements?
- Yes. A works item links to as many elements as it affects, and an element can carry several works items, so a re-roofing recommendation that also addresses box gutters and flashings appears once in the schedule and against each element in the body.
- Can the significance grades come from our CMP rather than being re-entered each year?
- Load the element list and its significance grades once as the register. Each annual survey then records only condition and change, and the template prints the significance alongside.
- Will the drafted text describe what is in our photographs?
- No. The drafting model works from the form answers and your reference documents, not the images. Photos are placed in grids and captioned from what the surveyor recorded.
What this is not
Worth knowing before you book a demo, so neither of us wastes the half hour.
- Not field-service dispatch. No timesheets, no parts, no inventory. Scheduling exists to get an inspector to a site.
- No signature capture. If your deliverable has to carry a signed sign-off on the artefact itself, this is not the tool yet.
- Field capture is what works offline — jobs, forms, photos, notes and audio. Reports, chat, scheduling and the inbox need a connection.
- No client portal. Reports go out as a file or a password-protected link.
Other heritage work we cover
- Archaeological site monitoringSite monitoring report
- Ghost sign documentationSign documentation report
- Historic cemetery surveysGrave condition survey
- Indigenous heritage surveysCultural heritage report
- Museum object condition reportsObject condition report
- Rock art condition monitoringRock art condition report
- Shipwreck site inspectionsWreck site report
- Statue and monument auditsMonument condition register
Other disciplines
Rebuild your conservation condition report in SurveyThanks
Bring the Word template you already send clients. If you are coming off another field-forms tool, a filled report can be uploaded, read field by field, and re-rendered into your template.