Heritage Building Documentation: Recording What Is There First

The Vancouver Heritage Register is the City's list of buildings and structures formally recognised by Council for their heritage value. The current policy was approved by Council on October 8, 2024, and was last amended on February 3, 2026. It replaced the earlier register, which had been in effect since December 1994, and the City describes it as a planning tool used primarily for recognising heritage property and managing it, including guiding changes through the permit application process.

The register lists 2,267 properties by address. An appendix holds a further 220 items that were listed previously without going through a heritage evaluation, kept for reference. Under the policy, a property has to be at least 20 years old to be considered for addition, additions require the owner's written consent, and both additions and removals are made by Council resolution.

Getting onto the register goes through the City's Heritage Evaluation Methodology, published in October 2024. An application is first reviewed by Heritage Planning staff, then assessed by a five-member evaluation subcommittee drawn from the Vancouver Heritage Commission and the heritage professional community, then endorsed by the Commission, and finally presented to Council. The evaluation looks at the place's historical context, its physical attributes and the community input received, and can result in a statement summarising its heritage value.

If you have worked with Vancouver heritage buildings before, you may remember the old register's A, B and C categories. The 2024 policy lists properties differently: each entry carries notations for any legal protection or formal recognition in place, rather than a ranking. Older reports and listings still use the letters, so it is worth knowing which version a document is referring to.

The Standards and Guidelines group conservation into three treatments: preservation, rehabilitation and restoration. A set of general standards applies to all three, with further standards for rehabilitation and for restoration. The City of Vancouver's own evaluation methodology borrows its definitions of heritage value and historic place from this document, which is one reason heritage consultants, architects and reviewers in Vancouver tend to work from it.

Four of the standards bear directly on the existing-condition record. Standard 3 calls for minimal intervention. Standard 7 asks that the existing condition of character-defining elements be evaluated to decide what intervention is appropriate. Standard 9 asks that any intervention be documented for future reference. And for rehabilitation, Standard 11 asks that new work be physically and visually compatible with the historic place, subordinate to it and distinguishable from it.

Each of those depends on knowing precisely what is there. Minimal intervention means changing as little as possible, which can only be judged against an accurate picture of what exists. Evaluating condition starts with locating every element being evaluated. Documenting an intervention for future reference needs a record of the building before it, so the change can be shown against it. And designing new work to be distinguishable from old work means the boundary between them has to be drawn accurately.

Older buildings rarely behave the way a tape measure assumes. Walls that look parallel are not, floors that look level fall toward one side, rooms that look square drift out of square, and ceilings change height from room to room where later work was installed under earlier work. Measured room by room, the plan of an old building often does not close: the dimensions add up differently on one side of the floor than on the other.

That matters more on a heritage project than on most. The existing-condition drawing is not just a base to be erased under a new design. It is evidence, used to argue for what stays, to locate features under protection and to show reviewers exactly what is changing. A drawing that tidies a crooked wall into a straight one, or averages two ceiling heights into one, has stopped being a record of the building.

A LiDAR capture measures the building from many scan positions and registers them into one dataset, so the drawing is taken from the building's actual geometry rather than built up from a chain of tape readings. Plans, reflected ceiling plans, elevations and sections all come from that same dataset, which keeps them consistent with each other. Where something is hidden behind furniture, stock or later finishes, it is flagged rather than estimated.

A LiDAR capture records visible surfaces: walls, openings, ceilings, floors, stairs, columns, fixed elements and their positions and heights. Inside, it is taken from floor level, so ceiling heights, beam positions and high features are measured without a lift or ladder. Where the scope calls for the exterior as well, it can record the building footprint, roof geometry and site context.

It does not see inside walls, under floors or above a ceiling that has been closed in. It cannot tell original fabric from a later copy, date a feature, identify a material, or judge whether a cornice or a window is sound. Those are questions for a heritage consultant, a conservator or an engineer, and the drawing gives them an accurate place to record their findings.

Our deliverables are the same on a heritage building as on any other: drawings as PDF, AutoCAD DWG and a Revit model where one is needed, drafted from the scan. If your team needs features recorded in a particular way, or a particular level of detail on protected interior features, say so when you book so the capture and drafting can be scoped to it.