Medical & Dental Clinics · Metro Vancouver
A clinic is not one space to be measured once. It is the same serviced room repeated eight or twelve times, and every one of them has plumbing, drainage, power and data landing in a specific place. A drawing that is right at the envelope and approximate inside it is no use to the people laying out treatment rooms or ordering the casework. We scan the clinic as it stands and deliver a measured record that holds room by room.
Most commercial space is documented from the outside in. You establish the envelope, find the core, locate the structure, and the interior resolves within it. A medical or dental clinic inverts that. The envelope is rarely the interesting part. What decides whether the space works is a set of near-identical serviced rooms — operatories, exam rooms, treatment bays — each one needing water, drainage, power, data and, in a dental practice, air and vacuum lines, all arriving at a position fixed by the chair or the table.
That makes the unit of design the room, not the floor. And it makes the accuracy that matters the accuracy inside each room, not the accuracy of the perimeter. A plan that is out by 40mm across a whole suite is a nuisance in an open office and largely invisible in a warehouse. In a clinic it is the difference between eleven operatories and ten, or between a cabinet run that fits the wall it was built for and one that has to be cut on site.
It also means the same question gets asked repeatedly rather than once. Where can the service runs actually reach? What is the real corridor width between the rooms and the sterilization area? Is the wall between two operatories where the old plan says it is, or where the last renovation left it? On a floor of identical rooms, a small error is not a single error — it is the same error eight times, and it compounds along the run.
An as-built survey does not design the clinic. That belongs to the architect and the consultants. What it does is remove the guesswork from underneath the design, so that the layout is drawn on measured walls, the casework is ordered against real dimensions, and the equipment is specified for the room it is actually going into.
A clinic set is read differently by different people. These are the spaces that determine whether it survives contact with a designer, an equipment supplier and a contractor.
| Space | What decides it | What the measured set has to carry |
|---|---|---|
| SpaceOperatories & exam rooms | What decides itThe position of the chair or table, and the services that reach it | What the measured set has to carryWall-to-wall dimensions per room, door swing and opening widths, ceiling height, and the located positions of visible services, outlets and terminations |
| SpaceSterilization & instrument processing | What decides itThe dirty-to-clean flow and the casework run that supports it | What the measured set has to carryThe full run length of the counter wall, sinks and drainage positions as measured, and the clear circulation around it |
| SpaceImaging & radiography rooms | What decides itEquipment footprint, mounting, and the construction of the surrounding walls | What the measured set has to carryRoom geometry, ceiling and structure heights, wall thicknesses as measured, and any existing shielded construction recorded as found rather than assumed |
| SpaceCorridors & equipment routes | What decides itWhether a chair, cabinet or imaging unit can physically get to its room | What the measured set has to carryCorridor and doorway widths along the whole delivery path, plus tight points such as turns, thresholds and low soffits |
| SpaceMechanical & service spaces | What decides itWhere compressors, vacuum plant and mechanical equipment already sit | What the measured set has to carryThe equipment room envelope, access to it, and the visible service runs leaving it toward the treatment rooms |
| SpaceReception, waiting & admin | What decides itCirculation, sightlines and the reception casework | What the measured set has to carryMeasured plan of the front-of-house area as its own set of dimensions, not as a remainder of the overall figure |
| SpaceCeiling void & structure above | What decides itThe depth genuinely available for services over a corridor of rooms | What the measured set has to carryHeight to finished ceiling and to structure, with clear void recorded along the run, and sealed areas flagged as limits of the survey |
What any particular clinic is required to provide depends on the practice, the occupancy and the authority having jurisdiction. That determination belongs with your architect and your consultants — what we supply is the measured basis they design from.
Every one of these traces back to the same thing: the plan the design started from was drawn for a different purpose, or a different building, or a renovation ago.
A layout is drawn to a target number of operatories on a plan that turns out to be generous. The lost room is discovered when the design is nearly complete, and by then the mechanical, the casework and the equipment order have all been sized around it.
Clinic millwork is largely built off site to fit a specific opening. A wall dimension that is out by a few centimetres becomes a filler panel, a return visit, or a run that has to be remade — none of which are quick and none of which were priced.
Chairs, imaging units and sterilizers arrive crated and have to travel a real corridor with real doorways and turns. The narrow point is usually somewhere nobody dimensioned, and it is found on delivery day.
Drainage, water, air and vacuum in an existing clinic have usually been altered at least once. Designing against a legacy drawing rather than a survey means the first accurate information arrives when something is opened up, which is the most expensive moment to learn it.
We measure to ±10mm, and on most projects that is a comfortable margin rather than a decisive one. A clinic is one of the places where it is decisive, because so much of what goes into the space is manufactured before it arrives.
The casework in an operatory, the sterilization run, the reception desk and the built-in storage are all made to fit a room that already exists. So is a good deal of the equipment mounting. When those are ordered from a drawing, the drawing is functioning as a specification, and its errors are transferred directly into something that has already been built by the time anybody discovers them.
Tape measurement in a fitted-out clinic accumulates error in exactly the way that hurts most here. Each dimension is taken between finished surfaces, in a room that is full of equipment, often by working around an obstruction, and the small differences add along a corridor of rooms. By the eighth operatory the drawing and the building can be some distance apart, and nothing about the drawing itself will reveal it.
A LiDAR survey captures the whole floor as one registered set of geometry, so the eighth room is measured to the same tolerance as the first and the relationships between them are held. Plans are then drawn from the point cloud rather than traced from an earlier plan, and where our measurement disagrees with a legacy drawing, the measurement governs and the difference is flagged for the design team to see.
A scan captures 360° imagery alongside the measurement, which is exactly what makes the deliverable useful and exactly why a clinic visit is booked outside patient hours by default — evenings, weekends, or a closure day. Nobody is photographed, no chart, screen or appointment board ends up in the tour, and the operator is not moving through occupied treatment rooms. Where a clinic prefers to be scanned in sections around a working schedule, that is workable, but it is worth agreeing at the scoping stage rather than on the day, along with anything that should be cleared, covered or closed before the operator arrives. Infection control, access to clinical areas and any conditions on who may enter them are the clinic's to set, and we work to them.
One operator, one case, one visit. Nothing is moved, nothing is mounted to the building, and nothing needs to be powered down.
Which rooms are in — treatment rooms, sterilization, lab, imaging, mechanical, staff and admin areas, reception — and when the operator can be in the space. For most clinics that is after close or on a non-clinical day.
The iGUIDE PLANIX is tripod-mounted and moves through the clinic one setup at a time, capturing LiDAR geometry and 360° imagery together. A floor of small serviced rooms takes more positions per square foot than an open plate, because every doorway and every equipment run creates something to see around.
Corridors, doorways, thresholds and turns are scanned as part of the set, so the path an item of equipment has to travel can be checked against the drawing instead of on delivery day.
Where there are existing access panels, removed tiles or an open ceiling, the void above is captured with everything else and the structure and services in it are recorded as measured. Where the ceiling is sealed, that is noted as a limit of the survey rather than filled in.
Plans are drawn from the point cloud, not traced from the landlord's or the previous practice's set, and disagreements between the two are flagged rather than quietly resolved.
PDF plans and a walkable 3D tour first, DWG for the design team and the equipment supplier, and a Revit model where the project runs in BIM.
Our own field photography. A clinic visit is one operator on foot with a single case.
Radiography, panoramic and cone-beam rooms are the part of a clinic where the drawing has to be most careful about what it claims. The equipment has a footprint and a mounting requirement, the room around it is often built differently from the rest of the suite, and both of those are physical conditions that a design team needs recorded accurately.
What a survey can establish is geometry: the room's dimensions, its ceiling and structure heights, the measured thickness of its walls, and where doors, openings and services sit relative to the equipment position. Where an existing room has clearly been constructed differently from its neighbours, that is recorded as found — as a measured condition, flagged for the design team, rather than interpreted.
What a survey cannot establish, and what we do not state, is what is inside those walls or whether any of it satisfies a requirement. Shielding design, verification and the requirements attaching to a specific installation are matters for your architect, a qualified radiation-protection consultant, the equipment supplier and the authority having jurisdiction. Our part is to give all of them the same accurate record of the room they are working on.
The same specification applies whether it is a four-room practice or a whole medical floor.
The right level of detail depends on what the drawings have to carry. Cost tracks floor area and scope, and the booking tool prices it instantly.
Most clinic projects want Shell 360, because the elevations and the visible services are the reason the survey is being commissioned.
Not every clinic survey is commissioned for a renovation. A practice changing hands is one of the more common reasons a measured record is wanted, because the premises are part of what is being valued and the incoming practitioner is inheriting a fit-out they did not specify. A scan gives them a drawing set and a walkable record of the space as it stood at the transition, which is a far more useful document than whatever plan happens to be in the filing cabinet.
The same applies at the other end of a tenancy. A landlord or a departing practice documenting a clinical suite at handover is recording a condition that cannot be reconstructed afterwards, once equipment has been removed and surfaces made good.
For groups running several locations, the value shifts from any individual drawing to the consistency between them. When each site has been measured by whoever was available at the time, the plans cannot be read across and the room standards cannot be compared. Rolling every location through the same capture method and the same drafting conventions gives one set that can be compared site to site — which is what makes a repeatable operatory or exam-room standard testable against real premises at the design stage, rather than during installation.
Architects and interior designers use it as the base they lay out against, with measured wall elevations for the rooms the casework is drawn into.
Equipment suppliers and millwork fabricators use it to confirm that what they are building or shipping fits the room it is destined for, and that it can physically get there.
Mechanical and electrical consultants use it to see what services are already at the space and what clear void is genuinely available above the treatment rooms.
General contractors use it to price the work and to establish the existing condition before demolition, which is the point at which a wrong drawing becomes a change order.
Practices, landlords and property managers use it as the current record of the premises — for a transition, for a handover at end of term, and for keeping one consistent measurement of the space instead of three competing ones.
If the drawings are being commissioned for a fit-out or a renovation rather than for the record, the tenant improvement page covers where the as-built sits in the sequence — before space planning, before the permit set, before pricing and before demolition.
Opens the tenant improvement page on this site.
Usually, yes. The kit arrives in one case and is set up by a single operator on foot, so an evening, a weekend or a non-clinical day is enough for most practices. We book clinic visits outside patient hours by default, which keeps patients and any patient information out of the 360° imagery and lets the operator hold each scan position properly rather than working around a room in use.
No. Chairs, cabinetry, imaging units and storage are scanned around, and anything genuinely obscured behind a solid run of equipment is flagged in the deliverable rather than estimated. It is worth mentioning at the scoping stage anything you would prefer cleared, covered or closed, so it can be planned into the visit instead of decided on the day.
More accurate than most building types, because so much of what goes into a clinic is manufactured off site to fit a room that already exists. Casework, sterilization runs and reception joinery are all built to a drawing, so the drawing is acting as a specification. We measure to ±10mm and draw from the point cloud, so the eighth treatment room is held to the same tolerance as the first.
We record them as geometry — room dimensions, ceiling and structure heights, measured wall thicknesses, and the positions of doors, openings and visible services relative to the equipment. Where a room has plainly been built differently from its neighbours, that is noted as a measured condition. What we do not do is state what is inside a wall or whether any construction satisfies a requirement: shielding design and verification belong with your architect, a qualified radiation-protection consultant, the equipment supplier and the authority having jurisdiction.
No. What a medical or dental fit-out has to comply with depends on the practice, the occupancy, the building and the authority reviewing the application, so that determination belongs with your architect and your consultants. What we provide is the measured basis they all work from — an accurate record of the existing condition, drawn to ±10mm, that their design and the permit set can be built on.
It is one of the better moments to do it. The premises are part of what is changing hands, and once the transition is complete the condition at handover cannot be reconstructed. A scan produces both a measured drawing set and a walkable record of the space as it stood, which is more useful to an incoming practitioner than an inherited plan of unknown vintage.
Yes, and that is where the method earns most. Every location is captured the same way and drafted to the same conventions, so the plans can be read across rather than reconciled one at a time. That is what lets a standard operatory or exam-room layout be tested against each site during design instead of during installation.
Floor plans and the walkable 3D tour follow the visit in one to two business days, with CAD and BIM deliverables within about a week. Most clinics are a single visit, though site time tends to run longer than an equivalent area of open office, because a floor of small serviced rooms needs more scan positions per square foot.
Book the scan online with an instant estimate. Plans and the 3D tour in one to two business days, CAD and BIM within the week.
