Building surveying personal statement example

Why do you want to study this course or subject?

My uncle bought a 1930s end-terrace two years ago, and because I was the one with time on my weekends, I ended up helping him work through its problems. We traced a damp patch in the back bedroom to a cracked render joint rather than the rising damp he assumed, cleared a gully that had been quietly flooding the same corner of brickwork for years, and got three quotes for a flat roof over the kitchen extension. What struck me was how much of it came down to careful looking: reading the pattern of staining, checking whether the plaster was cold or just discoloured, working out where water actually goes. The builder who won the work explained more about the building in twenty minutes than any of the online guides I had read.

After that I started reading properly. Books and guidance on damp and timber decay helped me see that diagnosis is often about eliminating explanations rather than confirming the first one, and material from the conservation side of the industry showed me why breathable construction and inappropriate repairs matter so much in older housing. I am drawn to building surveying because it sits between technical knowledge and giving people honest advice about property they usually cannot afford to get wrong. Much of the housing stock I walk past every day will still be in use in fifty years, so the work of assessing, repairing and adapting it seems more pressing to me than designing from scratch. I want a degree that covers construction technology, law, dilapidations and pathology, and a route towards chartered practice.

How have your qualifications and studies helped you to prepare?

Geography has been the most useful of my A-levels for this course. The physical units on weathering and water movement explain a surprising amount about why buildings fail, and the human geography work on urban change and housing gave me a sense of the pressures behind conversions, extensions and empty commercial units. For my independent investigation I surveyed the condition and current use of shopfronts along two high streets in my town, recording frontage type, evidence of alteration and vacancy, then linked the patterns to the arrival of a retail park. Doing the fieldwork taught me to record consistently, sketch quickly and accept that categories blur in real settings.

Maths matters to me because surveying involves constant quantification: areas, falls, loadings, costs over time. I am comfortable with trigonometry and with handling data in spreadsheets, which I used to tabulate and chart my Geography results. Design and Technology has been the most hands-on subject. My coursework project was a modular planter and bench for our community hall, and it forced me to think about material selection, timber movement, fixings and how something is maintained once it has been in the weather for a year. I learned to read manufacturers' technical data properly rather than guessing, and to draw clearly enough for someone else to build from my drawings. I also completed a short online course in construction health and safety awareness, which introduced me to risk assessment and to why access is such a limiting factor on inspections.

What else have you done to prepare outside of education, and why are these experiences useful?

I have worked Saturdays and school holidays at a garden centre for eighteen months, mostly on the tills and in the outdoor plants area, and more recently helping with stock ordering for hard landscaping. Customers frequently arrive with a problem rather than a product in mind, and I have got better at asking questions before answering: what the ground is like, how much shade there is, whether they can maintain it. Explaining why a cheaper option will not last is close to the sort of conversation I expect a surveyor to have regularly. Working outside in bad weather has also made me realistic about the conditions fieldwork involves.

At the community hall where I volunteer I help set up for events and lock up afterwards. The trustees asked me last winter to keep a simple log of maintenance issues, so I now record things like the sticking fire door, the blocked downpipe and the flaking paint on the hall's north elevation, with dates and photographs. Seeing how a small organisation prioritises repairs on a limited budget has been genuinely instructive.

Outside work I photograph older buildings around my area, particularly brickwork details, and have taught myself to recognise bond patterns, tuck pointing and where windows have been replaced in openings that were once different shapes. Sketching what I photograph has improved my observation more than the camera does. I also play in a five-a-side league, which keeps my weeks structured, and I have supported a younger cousin with her GCSE Maths, which taught me to explain method rather than just give answers.

This example has 4,688 characters across the three answers. Use it for ideas and structure. Your own UCAS answers must fit within 4,000 characters in total, including spaces.

Review this personal statement

Latest reviews