Building Surveying [with Foundation Year]

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.