Zen and the Art of… Surveying

The Greeks may have invented democracy while the Romans pioneered plumbing and gladiatorial entertainment, but it was the Egyptians – humanity’s finest walkers – who brought to life the civilisation-defining art of surveying. 

Necessity is the mother of invention, and with the Pharaohs seeking innovative, state coffer-filling mechanisms, ancient Egyptian surveyors were tasked with assisting in the taxation of land plots, using measuring ropes, plumb bobs and other instruments to assess the dimensions of pieces of property.  Jump ahead 3,500 years to April 2001 and a Space Odyssey opportunity of providing precise, legally defined spatial boundaries for the Northern Beaches and beyond saw Stuart McEvoy, David Lovell, Stuart Soltau, and Andrew Cummins, set up CMS Surveyors in a tiny office in Brookvale. 

With a commitment to integrity and a mission to provide the community with a professional, reliable and quality survey service, CMS has grown over the past two decades to become the gold standard in the industry, a dynamic, multidiscipline company with clients consisting of government bodies, architects, builders, developers and engineers, as well as solicitors, real estate agents and individual property owners, and now based in Cromer with 75 staff.

“I got into university to study Mining Engineering but then discovered Surveying as a subset of Engineering,” CMS director David Lovell recalls. “The more I learned, the more I enjoyed it, plus the appeal of living closer to the coast as opposed to off in some remote mining location, I saw very early on the chance to have a long and fulfilling career in surveying, while also providing an essential community service.”

So, the question naturally arises, what do surveyors actually do? Fellow CMS director Stuart McEvoy explains, “Surveying, the ability to meticulously map out the environment, is essentially the core foundation block of the entire property and legal framework of society. The planning and execution of most forms of construction require it. It is also used in transport, communications, mapping, and is an important tool for research in many other scientific disciplines.”

David adds, “It’s like being a land detective, on the job, going out with surveys that were made in 1800 and finding marks that were put in 100 or more years ago, measuring between those marks, figuring it all out, working out where a property truly starts and ends, getting your boots dirty while using all the tools at our disposal to find, down to the nearest millimetre, the boundaries of a property.”

CMS is not only totally committed to their clients, but also to developing the profession and the future professionals who’ll be part of it, investing countless hours in the career development of their staff as well as university students progressing towards graduation. “From the beginning, when we first established CMS, and ongoing, our chief focus is on integrity,” Stuart explains. “And that means providing the best work possible for our clients, but also making sure the standards of the profession are maintained to the highest level, which is why we make a concerted effort to be available for the next generation of surveyors, share our expertise and do everything we can to see surveying go from strength to strength.”