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Georgian townhouse office, Edinburgh
A five-storey New Town townhouse a client was thinking of buying as an office. No drawings brief, no specification, and a decision to make: what would it take to make this building work?
The challenge
The client was considering a Georgian townhouse in Edinburgh's New Town as a new office. Before committing, they needed to know three things: what network infrastructure the building already had, what Wi-Fi and cabling it would need to work as a modern office, and roughly what that would cost.
There was no specification and no scope to price against. The building had to be surveyed from scratch, with the client's own decisions about how each floor would be used made during the visit.
The building
Five levels, from the lower ground floor up to the third floor, around a central stair and a lift. Rooms of very different shapes and sizes: large front rooms with tall sash windows, a curved-wall room to the rear, smaller offices, a reception, meeting rooms and a library space at the top of the house. A rear courtyard. The solid masonry construction typical of the New Town is exactly what makes a period building hard to cover with Wi-Fi: walls that a modern office's plasterboard partitions are not.
That combination means a design copied from a floor plan would go wrong. Each floor has to be measured as it really is.
What we did
- An active on-site survey with Ekahau, floor by floor, from the lower ground to the third floor.
- Decisions on the day. A client representative was with us throughout, so the intended use of each room (workspace, meeting, reception, library) was settled while we were measuring, not guessed afterwards.
- Access point positions placed and recorded on every floor.
- Data points marked up on the drawings for the planned desk layouts: wall outlets and floor boxes, floor by floor.
- Existing infrastructure assessed: what was there, what could be reused, and where new cable and containment would have to go.
We travelled up from St Albans for the survey. Risk assessments and method statements were issued before the visit.
What the client got
- Wi-Fi heatmaps and recommended access point positions for each floor
- Marked-up drawings showing every proposed wall outlet and floor box
- Findings on the existing infrastructure, and what additional work it needs
- Budget costs, so the building could be judged on what it would really take to make it work
That is the point of surveying before you buy or sign a lease: the cost of making a building work is known before you are committed to it. See what a survey report contains, or how we run surveys across several sites and regions.
Different building, same question.
If your site has a coverage or capacity problem, the first step is measuring it. Tell us about the building and we'll tell you which survey answers it.
Our cabling, containment and power are installed under the group's accreditations — NICEIC, Constructionline Gold, CHAS and SafeContractor, held by The Specialist Electrical Group Ltd.
Talk to SEGwifi
Tell us about the building and what is going wrong. We will come back within one working day with the survey that answers it — or tell you that you do not need one.