Open with the edition: PAS 128:2022. Then attach a boundary plan. Then write the quality levels you need in each part of that boundary. If you cannot do those three things, you are not ready to tender a detection survey.
State that Type B includes electromagnetic locating and ground penetrating radar as a minimum, plus Type D and Type C. If you want processed GPR, say M3P or M4P rather than “high accuracy”. Accuracy is a quality level after the work, not a slogan before it.
Say how the ground should be marked, and say that markings are not the record. Say the coordinate system. Say CAD, GIS, or both. Say whether chamber cards and photographs are required — they should be. Say who may lift covers.
Leave space for residual risk. Instruct the surveyor to report services that were expected but not found, and ground that defeated radar. A specification that forbids bad news produces fiction.
Use the CICES client specification guide as a checklist, not as text to paste. Read HSG47 so the brief sits inside a safe system. Then send the pack with your quote request, or start from the PAS 128 surveys page if you would rather talk through the levers before you write them down.
Do not paste another surveyor’s scope and change the logo. That is how you import someone else’s assumptions, including ones that do not match 2022. Write the levers in your own sentences.
Include a sentence on what you will not buy. “No Type A unless we name the crossing” is a useful sentence. “No PDF-only return” is another. Specifications that only describe the dream product invite the cheapest misreading.
Name the people who may lift covers and the people who may authorise isolations. A beautiful Type B paragraph that cannot be performed because nobody can open a chamber is not a specification; it is a wish.
Then stop writing. A six-page PAS reprint in a tender is how bidders stop reading. A two-page brief with a boundary, quality levels, methods, files and residual risk is how you get comparable prices.
Attach the boundary plan as a file, not as a screenshot in the body of an email. Screenshots lose scale. Files can be coordinated.
Name the edition again in the form of appointment if you use one. Website copy is not a contract. The appointment is where 2022 has to appear if you want it to bind anyone.
If you are unsure, send a draft brief with this practice’s quote form and ask which sentences are missing. That is cheaper than a tender that five suppliers interpret five ways.
A short specification that names 2022, the pair of methods, the quality levels and the files will outperform a long one that pastes the PAS. Write the short one. Then stop, and let the surveyor propose the methodology type that fits the ground you actually have.
Take this into the brief
Write two pages, not six. Name the 2022 edition, the boundary, the quality levels by zone, the Type B pair, the markings, the files, and the invitation to report residual risk. Then stop. Long reprints of the PAS are how bidders stop reading.
Do not paste another firm’s scope. Attach a real boundary file, not a screenshot. Repeat the edition in the form of appointment if you use one. A short specification that can be priced is a better instrument than a long one that five suppliers interpret five ways.