Deformation and settlement monitoring software
Monitoring around an excavation, a tunnel or a new embankment is a series of rounds against the same points — prisms on a neighbour’s wall, settlement plates under fill, pins on a retaining wall — each compared with a baseline and with alert and alarm levels agreed before work started. The geotechnical engineer reads one thing first: has anything moved past a trigger. SurveyThanks keeps every point as a stored row, so each round’s readings line up against the same point every time.
Built for geotechs running teams of roughly 3–50 inspectors.
Sample Movement monitoring report
An illustrative excerpt. The site, readings and findings are fictional; the layout is yours to set.
Movement monitoring report
Round 14 — movement summary
- Project
- Fictional Street basement excavation
- Round date
- 20 July 2026
- Trigger levels
- Alert 10 mm, alarm 20 mm (monitoring plan)
| Point | Cumulative movement since baseline | Status |
|---|---|---|
| PM1 — neighbour wall, north | 3 mm settlement | Status: Below alert |
| PM3 — neighbour wall, east | 11 mm settlement | Status: Alert |
| SP2 — settlement plate, ramp fill | 16 mm settlement, slowing | Status: Watch |
| PM5 — shoring capping beam | Prism obscured by scaffold | Status: Not read |
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 movement monitoring report where your template puts it.
Point register
- Point ID and type (prism, pin, settlement plate)
- Location and photo
- Baseline date and value
- Alert and alarm levels
Per round
- Point (linked from the register)
- Reading
- Change since previous round
- Point condition (intact, disturbed, obscured)
Response
- Trigger reached
- Who was notified and when
- Actions agreed
How the movement monitoring report gets built
Capture it once, offline
Your firm builds the deformation monitoring round 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 marks, stations and monitoring points
Enter marks, stations and monitoring points once, as a register. Every one of your observations, rounds and movement readings then points at a stored row rather than a name somebody typed — and the links survive a disconnected device.
Render your own template
The movement monitoring 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 movement monitoring 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 movement summary reports 4 mm at PM3; the round’s readings put it at 11 mm.
Checks a surveying framework usually carries
- Control, datum and epoch are stated for every deliverable
- Quoted tolerances match the project specification being reported against
- Every mark named in the text exists in the register
- Assumptions and sources of error are recorded rather than assumed
Questions
- Can a settlement plate and a wall prism sit in the same register?
- Yes. Point type is a field on the register, so prisms, pins and settlement plates are all monitored points that rounds can link to, and the report can group them however your template lays out.
- What happens when a point is destroyed and replaced?
- Record its condition on the round and add the replacement as a new register row with its own baseline, so movement is never silently compared across two different points.
- Can each round’s report be reviewed before it goes to the engineer?
- Yes. A review framework you write can check that every point is either reported or explained and that every trigger reached has a recorded response.
- Can crews read points from a site with no coverage?
- Yes. The day’s jobs and forms are downloaded in advance and readings queue on the device until it reconnects.
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 surveying work we cover
- Laser scan site capturesPoint cloud delivery report
- Mine survey pickupsMine survey report
- Strata plan field verificationStrata plan report
- Utility locating recordsLocate mark-up report
- Volumetric drone surveysVolume report
- Aerial mapping missionsMapping deliverable report
- As-built verification surveysAs-built report
- Bathymetric survey runsBathymetry report
Other disciplines
Rebuild your movement monitoring 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.