Don't prepare a site plan with an old survey

A site plan is a drawing that serves as an overview of a proposed development a property owner is hoping to build. All site plans show the property and the existing and proposed buildings with ties to the nearest limits which means you need to be confident the boundary is correct. Often old surveys are used to save time and costs but this is risky and short sighted and can open the project to list of problems:

Boundary issues: A new survey will show the actual boundary and note any encroachments that can to be resolved at the beginning of the project before they cause delays.

Title Issues: A new survey will reference the current title. Old drawings may include obsolete or incorrect legal descriptions that may cause problems with the application when the site plan doesn’t match the actual description on title.

Easements: A new survey will show current easements. Old surveys won’t show them if the easements were added later. There could be expensive consequences if a proposed building interferes with an easement right so best to be aware early in the project.

Higher costs: Using an old survey saves costs in the short term since surveyors are $$$. But the boundary will need to be surveyed later anyways for the construction and asbuilts so completing the work at the beginning of the project will avoid delays and save costs. Architects, planners, and engineers can save time preparing the site plans using a .dwg of the new survey rather than trying to manually trace a boundary from a fuzzy old plan.

Improvements: Buildings, sheds, fences or any other improvement will be shown on a new survey. Trees may be shown on an old topo but will be bigger now and might be in the way of a new design.

Old plans are still useful!- surveyors use them every day- but only as evidence when calculating a new boundary- never to prepare a new document.