Which report do I need?

If it’s one crack, one area, one specific thing that’s caught your eye, this is your report. It’s a focused, fixed-fee inspection of that one issue, so you get a straight answer without paying for (or waiting on) an inspection of the whole building.

If there’s more than one issue, or you want the whole property checked over for peace of mind, our General Structural Inspection (GSI) is the better fit.

Quick facts

Fee	£570 inc. VAT. Fixed.
On site	1-2 Hours approx
Report	Within 24 hours
Carried out by	George Lifely, CEng MICE

Is this the right report for you?

A crack, a bulge, a sloping floor, a door that’s started sticking, something’s caught your attention, and now you can’t stop noticing it. That’s completely normal, and it’s exactly what this report is for.

You don’t need the whole building assessed. You need one straight answer: what’s causing it, whether it’s something to worry about, and what, if anything, to do next.

It’s the right report if:

• You’ve spotted one crack, or a group of cracks in one place, and you want it explained.
• A surveyor, valuer or solicitor has pointed at a specific defect and asked for a structural engineer’s opinion.
• Your lender or insurer wants one particular issue investigated before they’ll proceed.
• You’re buying, and there’s one thing about the property that’s bothering you.
• You want an honest answer from a Structural Engineer, not a quote from someone who’d also like to sell you the repair.

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The kind of thing we’re asked to look at

If your concern looks like one of these, you’re very likely in the right place.

Cracking around a bay window: common in Bristol’s Victorian and Edwardian terraces. Bay windows often sit on shallower foundations than the rest of the house, so they move independently, sometimes harmlessly, sometimes not.

A crack above a door or window: usually a sign the lintel has deflected, corroded, or wasn’t quite adequate to begin with. Sometimes it’s nothing at all. Telling the two apart isn’t something you can safely do from a photo.

Stepped cracking in brickwork: cracks that follow the mortar joints in a staircase pattern, often near a corner or where an extension meets the original house.

A bulging or leaning wall: a front wall bowing outward can mean wall ties failing in a cavity wall (common in properties built between the 1920s and 1980s). A leaning garden or boundary wall is its own, usually more straightforward, question.

Cracking where an extension joins the house: two structures of different ages and weights, joined together. A little movement at the junction is normal. Movement that’s clearly getting worse year on year isn’t.

Sloping or bouncy floors: often joist deflection, old pipework notched through a beam, or a failed sleeper wall. Occasionally something more.

Roof spread: rafters slowly pushing the tops of the walls outward, showing up as horizontal cracking near the eaves and a dip in the roofline.

Not seeing your situation here? Send a description and a photo through the enquiry form and we’ll tell you which report actually fits, honestly, even if that means pointing you elsewhere.

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What you’ll actually receive

Within 24 hours of the inspection, a written report lands in your inbox, in plain English, containing:

• A description of the property and the ground it sits on
• Photographs of what we found
• Our interpretation of what’s causing the movement or damage
• A clear conclusion: is it active, historic, or simply cosmetic
• What to do next, written so you can hand it straight to a solicitor, lender, insurer, or builder without translating it yourself

What’s not included

Being upfront about where this report stops is what keeps it fast, focused, and fixed-price.

• It’s a visual, non-invasive inspection, we don’t open up walls, excavate, or lift floors.
• It doesn’t cover damp, timber decay, or infestation.
• It doesn’t cover roof coverings, gutters, paintwork, or other finishes.
• It doesn’t cover doors, windows, or services.
• It doesn’t include repair calculations, drawings, or designs.
• It isn’t an RICS Level 2 or Level 3 survey. If you want the overall condition of the whole property assessed, that’s a job for a surveyor, and we’ll tell you so plainly if that’s what you actually need.

And we don’t carry out repairs ourselves. That’s deliberate; we have no financial interest in what the report recommends, which is rather the point of asking an independent engineer in the first place.

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Still not sure whether you need an SSI or a GSI?

You don’t have to work it out alone. Tell us what’s going on through the enquiry form, and we’ll recommend the right report when we send your quote, including telling you if the cheaper option is genuinely all you need.

	Specific Structural Inspection	General Structural Inspection
The question it answers	“What’s causing this, and is it serious?”	“Is this building structurally sound?”
Scope	One area or element of concern	The whole load-bearing structure
Typical trigger	A crack, bulge or slope that someone has pointed at	A survey, lender or valuer asking for the structure to be assessed
Usual reason	You know what’s worrying you	You don’t know where to look, or damage is widespread
Fee	£570 incl. VAT, fixed	From £810 incl. VAT, fixed once quoted
On site	1–2 hours	2–3 hours
Report	Within 24 hours	Within 24 hours
What’s excluded	Damp, building fabric, services, calculations, repair design	Damp, building fabric, services, calculations, repair design

Still not sure? Don’t spend time deciding. Describe the situation on the enquiry form and we’ll recommend the right one when we send your quote.

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How it works

• Tell us what’s concerning you — a five-minute enquiry form
• We send a fixed quote — within one working day
• You confirm, we book the date — usually the same day
• The inspection — typically within 1–2 weeks, about 1–2 hours on site
• Your report — in your inbox within 24 hours

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Who’s doing the inspection

Every inspection, and every report, is carried out personally by George Lifely. No site technician, no report-writing team, just the person who looked at your property writing down exactly what he found.

George is a Structural Engineer (CEng MICE) and an Associate of the RICS (AssocRICS), an unusual combination that means he reads a building the way a surveyor does and analyses it the way an engineer does. Having spent years writing Level 2 surveys himself, he knows exactly what a surveyor’s flagging when they recommend an SSI or GSI.

He’s carried out thousands of inspections across the South West and beyond, on everything from Victorian terraces to bridges and multi-storey towers. That range matters here: understanding how a building’s meant to behave is how you spot what’s actually gone wrong with one that isn’t.

Lifelys was started in 2007 by his father as a surveying practice. George grew up around it, studied at the University of Bristol, and lives in Bristol now.