Cemetery and grave condition survey app
A historic cemetery survey is a register before it is a report: every grave numbered and located, its inscription transcribed, its material and monument type recorded, and its condition graded — including whether a leaning headstone is a risk to visitors. Historical societies and trustees use the result to plan conservation and to answer family history enquiries; councils use it to manage monument safety. SurveyThanks treats each grave as a row on a register, so a cemetery of a thousand plots can be surveyed over many visits and reported as one document.
Built for historical societies running teams of roughly 3–50 inspectors.
Sample Grave condition survey
An illustrative excerpt. The site, readings and findings are fictional; the layout is yours to set.
Grave condition survey
Section C, Row 4 — Monument condition
- Cemetery
- Fictional Creek General Cemetery (est. 1868)
- Surveyed
- 9 August 2026
- Stability check
- Visual and gentle hand test
| Plot | Monument | Condition | Risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| C4-07 | Marble headstone on sandstone base | Inscription legible; base joint open | Risk: Monitor |
| C4-08 | Cast iron grave surround | Two rails detached and lying in plot | Risk: Low |
| C4-09 | Sandstone obelisk, 2.1 m | Leaning 8° to the east; moves under hand pressure | Risk: High |
| C4-10 | Concrete ledger | Sound; lichen cover | Risk: None |
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 grave condition survey where your template puts it.
Per plot
- Section, row and plot number
- GPS position or map pin
- Monument type and material
- Inscription transcription
- Names and dates of those commemorated
- Photographs, front and inscription detail
Condition
- Lean angle
- Stability (stable / moves / fallen)
- Cracking, delamination or erosion
- Vegetation and lichen
- Safety risk grade
Standards the report works to
- AS 4204Headstones and cemetery monuments
- The Australian standard for monument design and installation, often referred to when judging whether a monument is stable.
- Burra Charter (2013)The Australia ICOMOS Charter for Places of Cultural Significance
- Guides recommendations on re-setting and repair so original fabric and inscriptions are retained.
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 grave condition survey gets built
Capture it once, offline
Your firm builds the historic cemetery 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 grave condition survey 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 grave condition survey 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 volunteers survey different sections on different days?
- Yes. Plots are entered once as a register and each visit adds observations against them, so ten volunteers over a season contribute to the same record and the same final report.
- Can the report list only the high-risk monuments for council?
- The template can filter and loop over plots by risk grade, so one survey can produce a full register for the society and a short safety schedule for the trustee or council.
- Is there a field for long inscriptions?
- Yes — free text fields hold full transcriptions, and a photo-with-comment field lets the surveyor note where a reading is uncertain against the image itself.
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
- Heritage building condition surveysConservation condition report
- 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 grave condition survey 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.