Setting out: when the drawings meet the ground

This note is for due diligence on a construction site. It is not legal advice, not a determination of your legal boundary, and not development permission. The architect and engineer own the drawings. The county owns the permission. The contractor builds. The licensed surveyor puts those drawings on the ground — and can later show what was actually built.

The client’s quest is simple: the building must sit where the approved drawings say it sits, on the land you actually hold, at the levels the design needs. A contractor’s string from a neighbour’s wall is not that. A phone GPS pin is not that. A fence is not that. Setting out is the survey that translates the file into marks the site can work to — and that you can defend if the pour goes wrong.

What the client is actually asking for

The clients are different people. The result they need is the same.

• The owner or developer about to pay for foundations, and who will live with a house that is too close to the neighbour, too low for drainage, or over a wayleave.
• The architect whose design is finished and approved, and who needs the ground to receive it — not a “we measured from the gate.”
• The engineer who needs grid, axes and levels that the structure can be held to.
• The contractor who must set formwork and wants control that can be reoccupied after the excavator has been through.

They are not asking for a new title. They are not asking for a mutation. They are asking that construction be true to the drawings and true to the site. If that is not possible — because the drawings do not fit the parcel, or there is no permission — that is the first thing they need to hear. Not after the slab is cast.

What the client must have — before anyone marks the ground

1. Development permission and the approved drawings. The Physical and Land Use Planning Act, 2019, section 57 is blunt: you do not carry out development in a county without development permission. Section 58 is the application; section 59 requires the plans and particulars to be prepared by the relevant qualified, registered and licensed professionals. The 2021 development-permission regulations are how that paper is issued. Setting out a building that has no permission is not a survey product. It is helping work the Act makes an offence. Send the approved architectural and engineering drawings, and the permission. We set out from those — not from a WhatsApp sketch.
2. A site that is the site in the drawings. The Land Registration Act, section 18 still applies: unless the register notes that the boundaries are fixed, the cadastral map is only approximate. A well-kept fence is a section 20 duty, not a building line. If you have never checked the parcel against the search and the map, start with a Land Check and, if needed, the boundary — not with pegs for a house. The Land Act and the user on the register still bind you: permission to build does not appear because the contractor is ready.
3. The constraints that sit on the drawing. Road reserves, building lines, setbacks, wayleaves and service lines are often planning or overriding-interest questions (Land Registration Act, section 28 — electric lines, pipelines and similar burdens need not appear on the title). The topo should already have shown them if you did a Build-Ready Site. If it did not, setting out will find the clash. Better on the first visit than in the foundation.
4. The stage of works. First visit for primary control and the building corners is a different job from a later grid for columns, or levels for a slab. Say where you are. Do not ask us to “just mark the house” on a Monday and pour on Tuesday if control does not yet exist.

Common law and ordinary sense: if you build over the line, you may be a trespasser even if the title is in your name and the contractor was “sure.” Occupation and a string line will not save the file. Caveat emptor still has work after purchase — it has more work after the concrete is hard.

How the surveyor supports that quest

This is still survey work. The Survey Act makes a licensed surveyor responsible for the correctness of every survey carried out by that surveyor or under that surveyor’s supervision. The Survey Regulations govern how control is held and who may assist. An approved assistant is not a substitute for that responsibility. We do not guess a line on site. We establish it.

In support of the client, the surveyor:

• reads the approved drawings against the permission and against what is known of the parcel — and says if the layout cannot fit, or if a boundary or wayleave question must be answered first;
• establishes or occupies site control that the design team and the contractor can come back to after earthworks;
• sets out the points the job needs: building corners, grid or axes, offsets, and the levels the drawings specify;
• leaves marks and a record the site can use — not a memory of where the string was;
• returns, if the job requires it, for further set-out as the structure rises;
• does an as-built survey when you need what was built on record: against the drawings, for a dispute, for an occupation file, or later for a sectional plan.

The surveyor does not grant development permission. The surveyor does not change the architect’s design on site because “it looks better this way.” The surveyor does not fix a legal boundary by placing a house peg. The surveyor does not take the contractor’s place.

What setting out is not

• Not a cadastral survey. Pegs for construction are not beacons for the register. If the line itself is in dispute, that is the Registrar’s process under the Land Registration Act (sections 18 and 19) and the Survey Act — not a set-out visit.
• Not a topographic survey. Topo is what the architect needed before design. Setting out is what the site needs after the drawings are approved. Doing set-out from a Google image because you skipped the topo is how cut-and-fill and floor levels go wrong.
• Not a mutation or a cadastral plan of new plots. If you are still splitting the land, stop. See subdivision.
• Not permission to start. PLUPA section 57 remains. Conditions on the approval (building line, coverage, access) remain. We hold the building to the paper you have. We do not invent a paper you do not have.

What to send us

1. The approved drawings (architecture and, where they exist, structure / civil) in a form we can set out from — not a photo of a print on a wall.
2. The development permission and any conditions that affect siting or levels.
3. The parcel particulars and any existing survey, topo or control on the site.
4. The stage of works and the date you need the marks — honestly.

We will tell you whether the drawings can be put on that ground, what control the job needs, and whether a boundary or permission question must come first. We will not promise that a house peg is a title, or that a pour can start before the site is ready.

Related: what a topographic survey gives your architect · where is the boundary? · can I subdivide this land? · surveyor in Thika.