Building Surveying [with Foundation Year]

Start an exciting professional career as a building surveyor, advising clients about sustainable property, retro-fit and building adaptions and improvements.

Why study Building Surveying at ARU?

• Accredited by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), ensuring you gain the full range of professional and technical skills required, from converting buildings to performing surveys and valuations.

• Get hands-on by developing skills in all aspects of surveying buildings using industry equipment.

• Utilise our state-of-the-art facilities including industry standard equipment, AutoCAD Studios and testing and surveying labs.

• Bring the world of work to life through Live Briefs; designed and developed with regional employers to give you exposure to ‘real world’ problem-solving.

• Benefit from strong industry links with professional institutions, local firms and building surveying experts to increase your employability upon graduation.

Learn how to evaluate the design, specification and performance of buildings. Develop skills in building inspection and analysis, and use industry-standard equipment to recognise and tackle defects, and identify technical problems in construction. There are plenty of opportunities to get hands-on in specialist labs for materials and testing, environmental science and design, and surveying. You’ll also work in our design and AutoCAD studios.

As a BSc (Hons) Building Surveying student at ARU, you’ll find yourself working independently and as part of larger built environment teams. This helps you understand where building surveyors ‘fit in’, and it’s great preparation for your future career.

You’ll learn the knowledge and skills you’ll need to succeed in the building surveying industry, covering site surveying, CAD drawing, BIM modules, construction management processes, techniques and materials, design analysis, sustainability and the contractual, legal, economic, financial, risk and health and safety aspects.

You’ll learn the costs and complications involved in extending, adapting, altering and conserving existing buildings for re-use with a view to optimising their long-term sustainable economic viability and remaining sensitive to their history. You’ll consider building defects, their analysis and diagnosis, and their required remedial action, and examine a building development project from inception to completion.

You’ll put together a home buyers’ report to help you learn how to recognise residential buildings’ defects and characteristics and their impact, and how to observe health and safety and data protection rules while doing so. You’ll inspect and prepare a schedule of dilapidations and a building survey of real-life commercial buildings, with a detailed report for potential clients and their legal advisors.

Our Building Surveying degree course is accredited by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), so when you graduate, you can take your Assessment of Professional Competence (APC) and qualify as a Chartered Surveyor.

As a skilled Building Surveying graduate, you’ll be in great demand. Our hands-on course offers opportunities to experience construction environments as well as inspecting and valuing buildings, which will enhance your employability and give you a taster of some of the places you could be working.

Year 1:
Interactive Learning Skills and Communication
ICT Skills
Critical Thinking
Maths for Scientists
Maths for Engineers
Physics for Engineers
Engineering Design
Fundamentals of Computing

Year 2:
BIM and Dimensional Control (30 credits)
Technology and Structures (30 credits)
Health and Safety Project Control and Resourcing (30 credits)
Law and Economics (30 credits)

Year 3:
Management Practice (15 credits)
Project Administration (15 credits)
Building Inspection and Analysis (15 credits)
Property and Land Law (15 credits)
Advanced Technology and Environmental Impact (30 credits)
Building Surveying Documentation (15 credits)
Ruskin Module (15 credits)

Year 4:
Conversion and Adaptation of Buildings (15 credits)
Building Surveying Practice I (15 credits
Building Surveying Practice 2 (15 credits)
Building Pathology (15 credits)
Project Evaluation and Development (15 credits)
Risk, Value and Environmental Impact (15 credits)
Major Project (30 credits)

Your Foundation year will prepare you for the rest of your course. We’ll focus on general skills such as researching and referencing, numeracy and ICT, and critical thinking. But we’ll also look at topics including classical mechanics, design, computer science, programming and coding. Plus, there’s a focus on developing mathematical skills.

Professionally accredited courses provide industry-wide recognition of the quality of your qualification.

• Chartered Surveyors, Royal Institution of