Survey checklist

MEP equipment survey checklist

What to capture on each unit before you walk away from it, set out by discipline. The test for every field below is the same: if it is missing, does someone have to come back?

Capture on every unit: manufacturer, model, serial number, the tag as labeled on site, location to room level, electrical rating, the capacity rating for that equipment type, and observed condition. Then run the closeout checks before leaving — unreadable plates, unmatched schedule rows and unplaced captures are cheap to fix on site and expensive afterwards.

Capture the nameplate, relevant sub-plates, site tag and surrounding context as the equipment and survey scope require.

Capture on every unit, whatever the discipline

These fields are discipline-independent. A survey that captures only these is thin, but missing fields should be flagged and assessed against the survey scope.

Identity

Manufacturer
Model number, in full — suffixes usually encode capacity and options
Serial number, legible character by character
Unit tag as labeled on the machine
Schedule tag it appears to correspond to, if different

Context

Building, floor and room
Position within the room, where several identical units sit together
Access conditions and what is needed to reach it
Observed condition, with the evidence photographed
What it appears to serve or be fed from, where visible on site

Electrical data worth arguing about

The electrical fields are where surveys are most often thin, and they are the ones a retrofit design cannot proceed without.

01: Volts / phase / Hz
02: FLA — full load amps
03: MCA — minimum circuit ampacity
04: MOCP — max overcurrent protection
05: Motor HP or kW
06: Fed from

Field	Applies to	What it decides
Volts / phase / Hz	All powered equipment	Confirms supply compatibility on replacement
FLA — full load amps	Motors and packaged units	Input to electrical design review
MCA — minimum circuit ampacity	Packaged HVAC equipment	Nameplate ampacity requirement for design review
MOCP — max overcurrent protection	Packaged HVAC equipment	Upper limit on breaker or fuse size
Motor HP or kW	Fans, pumps, compressors	Drive sizing and energy calculations
Fed from	Every unit, where traceable	What goes dark when a panel is isolated

By discipline

Beyond the universal set, each discipline has fields that decide whether the record can be designed from.

Mechanical

Airside, waterside and the plant that drives them.

Capacity: tons, MBH, CFM or GPM as appropriate to the unit
External static pressure on air-moving equipment
Refrigerant type and factory charge
Heating input and output where the unit fires
Filter sizes and quantities, for units that will be maintained
Drive arrangement — direct, belt, or variable speed

Electrical

Distribution and the equipment hanging off it.

Panel and switchboard ratings: voltage, phase, main breaker, bus rating
Available spare ways and spare capacity
Transformer kVA, primary and secondary voltages, impedance
Generator and ATS ratings, fuel type, transfer arrangement
Panel schedules photographed, including handwritten amendments
Which panel feeds each surveyed unit, where the label allows

Plumbing

Generation, storage and the pumps that move it.

Water heater input, storage volume, recovery rate, fuel
Pump duty: flow, head, motor rating
Backflow preventer type, size and last test date if labeled
Booster set configuration and pressure settings
Tank capacities and materials
Pipe material and size at connection, where visible

Before you leave the building

Allow time for these closeout checks while equipment is still accessible. Record anything that cannot be resolved.

Resolve now

Plates that did not photograph legibly — re-shoot them
Schedule rows with no matching capture — find the unit or record it as absent
Captures that cannot be tied to a room
Units with no legible tag — assign a site reference and note it

Record as open

Rooms and risers that could not be opened, with the reason
High-level plant that needed access equipment you did not have
Areas refused by tenants, with the date and the contact
Anything contradicting the drawing that needs a second opinion

Using this on a live survey

A checklist works when the checking happens at capture time. Worked through afterwards against a folder of photos, it mostly generates a list of things you can no longer fix.

That is the argument for capture that validates as it goes: field data collection covers the on-site half, and the HVAC checklist goes deeper on airside and waterside plant specifically.

Using this checklist

What information should be captured from MEP equipment?

Record the manufacturer, model, serial, site tag, location and observed condition, plus the ratings relevant to the equipment and survey scope. Capture a printed manufacture date when present; retain the serial for identification and supported date lookups.

Why capture the tag from the machine when the drawing already has one?

Because they disagree more often than people expect. Contractors renumber during installation, replacements inherit new tags, and tenant fit-outs invent their own conventions. Recording the site tag and the schedule tag separately is what makes the two traceable to each other.

Is a photograph of the nameplate enough on its own?

No. A plate photograph with no context cannot tell you which room the unit was in, which of four identical machines it was, or what it appeared to serve. The plate is one of several captures per unit, not the whole capture.

Capture that checks itself

See how equipment photographs become records for review, and how to work through missing or uncertain information.

Explore the demo