Charleston reality capture
The city that invented American preservation still runs on the record.
Charleston wrote the first historic-preservation ordinance in the United States in 1931 and stood up the country's first Board of Architectural Review to enforce it. That board still reviews new construction, alterations, and demolitions visible from the public right-of-way across the Old and Historic District. When the paperwork on a building has to be that exact, and the streets flood, and the port keeps growing, an accurate three-dimensional record stops being a nicety and becomes the way work gets done.
What does the oldest preservation regime in the country ask for?
A Board of Architectural Review submission stands on how well the existing building is documented. A single-house on the peninsula has been standing for two hundred years, and its walls have racked, its floors have sloped, and its detail has been repaired more times than anyone recorded. A laser scan captures the facade, the piazza, and the interior as they actually survive, which is the honest baseline a BAR-facing project needs. That is historic preservation scanning.
The same capture serves renovation and adaptive reuse across the district as ordinary building and interior documentation. A design team working inside a protected shell cannot afford to assume a wall is plumb or a floor is level, because in Charleston it usually is not.
The port is growing, and new work still meets old context.
The Port of Charleston is one of the busier and faster-growing container ports on the East Coast, and the logistics, warehouse, and commercial build-out around it runs on tight coordination. When a renovation or an expansion needs a modeled building the trades can work from, a laser scan turns into a coordinated scan-to-BIM model that matches the field, so mechanical, structural, and architectural work does not collide with conditions the drawings never showed.
Low ground and rising water make the site itself worth recording.
Charleston sits low, and its streets flood on a schedule the tide sets. Grading, drainage, and resilience work all start from an accurate picture of where the ground actually is. Capturing a site and its surroundings as measured terrain gives engineers and owners a baseline for flood mitigation, elevation, and site planning. That is land and site documentation, and near the water it is the first thing a flood project needs.
How we cover Charleston.
We do not keep an office in Charleston. We serve the metro through a nationwide network of vetted reality-capture technicians, and we produce and stand behind the deliverable ourselves. You deal with our team on scope, pricing, and the final model. A technician handles the capture on site. What you receive is the same standard whether the site is a single-house south of Broad or a warehouse near the terminal.
Published prices.
| Deliverable | Price |
|---|---|
| Half-day scan (capture) | $1,500 to $2,300 to start |
| Full-day scan (capture) | $3,500 to $4,100 to start |
| Modeling from the scan | $0.10 / sq ft ($500 min) |
Capture is the scan itself. Modeling, BIM, and site deliverables are scoped to the building or the parcel. Tell us the square footage and what you need out of it, and we price it.
Explore
Tell us what needs measuring in Charleston.
A protected building headed to the Board of Architectural Review, a build-out near the port, or a low-lying site that floods. Send us the location and the deliverable you need, and we scan it, model it, and stand behind it.
Get a quoteQuestions about a Charleston project? Reach us at info@scanningandmodeling.com or (772) 210-4584.