Lambeth Council Cuts 99% of Time Managing Site Surveys, Speeding Up Projects by 9 Months
It’s a game-changer for managing site surveys."
🎯 The Challenge
The London Borough of Lambeth, like many councils, carries a broad set of responsibilities—from education and social care to housing and infrastructure. Among these, a critical focus is managing and developing its property estate to unlock land for housing and regeneration.
A key part of this responsibility is understanding and de-risking their land portfolio. To make informed decisions about which sites to progress, Lambeth must first identify site-specific risks—ranging from asbestos and utilities to ecology, contamination, and topography.
Each site typically requires 8 to 15 technical surveys, and every survey must be tendered, instructed, tracked, and reviewed. That means three comparable quotes per survey, per project.
Just tendering and appointing surveyors alone:
Took up to three weeks per project
Required six full working days of staff time
Involved multiple approval gateways, procurement hurdles, and constant back-and-forth with suppliers
The result? Delays in decision-making, stretched internal capacity, and missed opportunities to accelerate much-needed housing delivery.
🛠 The Attempted Fix
Before adopting RenKap, Lambeth made efforts to manage the process using a mix of internal workflows and external consultants. However, the core challenges persisted:
Procurement remained slow and labour-intensive
Surveyor vetting was a challenge
Getting 3 quotes for each survey was unreliable
Senior staff were often required to manage surveys due to their complexity
Consultants were expensive and a temporary fix
Despite best efforts, the administrative burden of managing surveys continued to block progress diverting internal resources and slowing the council’s ability to unlock more sites for housing.
🚀 The Transformation
As part of a pilot programme funded by the MHCLG’s PropTech Innovation Fund, Lambeth set out to test new digital solutions aimed at improving development capacity within local authorities. A key focus of the pilot was site assessment and Lambeth wanted to address one of the most persistent barriers: the site survey process.
Surveys were consistently delaying decisions, absorbing senior staff time, and limiting the number of sites Lambeth could progress with their existing capacity. The council needed a way to streamline procurement, ensure compliance, and accelerate access to reliable site risk data—all without increasing headcount or outsourcing everything to consultants.
Through the pilot, Lambeth partnered with RenKap, a purpose-built Site Survey Marketplace designed to centralise, automate, and de-risk the entire survey process—from tendering through to summarising survey outcomes.
Through RenKap Lambeth were able to:
- Upload a site and select their required surveys (e.g. asbestos, utilities, ecology, topographical, etc)
- Instantly receive 3+ quotes per survey from a pre-vetted network of surveyors – all like-for-like on a comparable scope
Select and instruct multiple surveyors – one contract and one invoice
Track survey progress live, manage site access, and approve RAMS (risk assessments & method statements)
Receive all survey outputs digitally, with an automated risk register summarising key findings and recommended next steps
Instruct any additional recommended surveys directly from the risk register with a single click
By simplifying what used to take weeks of back-and-forth, RenKap enabled Lambeth to reduce their survey admin by over 90%.
📈 Results That Matter
RenKap supports three critical stages in the survey lifecycle, all of which had previously been major pain points for Lambeth:
Tendering & Procuring Surveyors
Managing Live Surveys
Reviewing Survey Outputs & Summarising Site Risk
Each of these stages traditionally required manual effort, fragmented systems, and senior staff input—leading to project delays and high internal costs.
As part of the MHCLG PropTech pilot, Lambeth put RenKap to the test. Over the course of the programme, the council progressed 13 live projects, tendered 182 surveys, and received over 546 quotes from pre-vetted suppliers via the platform.
Here’s what that translated into:
Stage 1: Tendering & Procurement of Surveyors
Historically, procuring surveyors was a time-intensive, multi-step process involving manual quote requests, spreadsheet comparisons, internal approvals, multiple contracts, and supplier onboarding. With RenKap:
Time reduced from 3 weeks to 25 minutes
Cost dropped from £1,363 to £13 per project
Result: 99% reduction in procurement admin time
Stage 2: Managing Live Surveys
Managing surveyors involved coordinating site access, chasing RAMS, scheduling visits, and tracking progress—usually via emails, spreadsheets, and phone calls.
With RenKap, this operational overhead was drastically reduced:
Time reduced from 1 full day (7.5 hrs) to 2 hours
Cost dropped from £227 to £151
Live dashboards and automated reminders simplified access and tracking
Result: 73% reduction in active management time
Stage 3: Reviewing Outputs & Risk Summaries
Previously, reviewing and summarising survey data involved combing through multiple reports, compiling key risks manually, and sharing findings with project stakeholders. With RenKap:
Time reduced from 2 days to 5 minutes
Cost dropped from £456 to £2.50
Auto-generated risk register highlighted issues, actions, and costs
Result: 99% reduction in review/admin time
🏁 Cumulative Impact
Across all three stages, RenKap helped Lambeth:
Save over £17,600 in staff time
Cut more than 9 months of cumulative project delay
Enable junior staff to lead survey delivery using best practice workflows
Gain clearer visibility of site risks across the pipeline, enabling faster and better development decisions
These results not only saved time and money—they directly improved Lambeth’s ability to unlock more sites and accelerate the delivery of much-needed housing.
🔮 Looking Ahead
Lambeth plans to expand RenKap’s use across more teams and departments. With the platform now embedded into workflows, the Council is exploring an Enterprise Plan to unlock advanced features and analytics.
The vision? Faster housing delivery, improved internal capacity, and better-informed decision-making across the development lifecycle.
Streamline Your Surveys
Do you spend a lot of time managing surveys? Explore how RenKap can streamline your site survey process and accelerate project timelines.
The only site investigation checklist you need
Download our site investigation checklist, which covers the 13 site investigation surveys you need to complete on every site. This includes a rundown of why you need each of them and at what stage throughout the project lifecycle.
The only site investigation checklist you need
Download our site investigation checklist, which covers the 13 site investigation surveys you need to complete on every site. This includes a rundown of why you need each of them and at what stage throughout the project lifecycle.