Before we built Surfboard, we wanted to understand what happens to a survey plan after the surveyor has prepared it. What we found was a process that depends on several people handling the same information, often through manual steps.
01 / THE RECORD COPY
It starts with a record copy
When a surveyor completes a survey plan, the work does not end with preparing the drawing.
A record copy must be prepared for submission to the Office of the Surveyor General. The surveyor also prepares a formal letter addressed to the office, accompanying the record copy for lodging.
From there, the plan enters an administrative process that varies across states but generally involves several stages of validation, assessment, payment and technical review.
This is where the journey becomes more complicated.
02 / BEFORE LODGING
Before the plan can be lodged
One of the first steps is validating the survey numbers.
These numbers, including the pillar numbers shown on the plan, need to be checked against the relevant records to establish that they correspond with the survey job and the survey information presented.
This is an important part of maintaining the integrity of survey records. The details on a submitted plan must be checked against the information available to the responsible office.
But the validation process involves manually examining and comparing information.
The plan then moves to assessment. Government fees are calculated according to the applicable scale of fees, which may depend on factors such as the size of the survey and the zone in which it falls.
Because each state has its own processes and requirements, the specific procedure and applicable fees can differ. Within a state, the assessment itself can involve manually checking the plan against the relevant criteria.
Once the assessment is completed, payment is made to the government. That payment must then be verified before the process can continue.
The plan proceeds to further technical review, where officers examine it for discrepancies and other issues that may need to be resolved.
If a problem is identified, a query is raised and sent back to the surveyor for attention.
Each stage serves a purpose. The office must validate records, collect the appropriate fees and ensure that the survey information meets the necessary requirements.
The difficulty lies in how these stages are handled and how information moves between them.
03 / WHERE IT STALLS
When information stops moving
Consider what this process requires.
Pillar numbers must be checked. Fees must be assessed. Payments must be verified. Technical details must be reviewed. Queries must reach the surveyor, and responses must find their way back into the review process.
When these activities depend on manual handling, the process becomes difficult to track from the outside.
A surveyor may have submitted a record copy without having a clear view of its current stage. If a query is raised, getting access to that query and understanding what needs to be done can become another challenge.
The surveyor may not know whether the plan is awaiting assessment, payment verification, technical review or a response to an outstanding issue.
Each stage can create another point at which the process slows down.
The problem is not that these checks are unnecessary. It is that the people involved need a more efficient way to exchange information, keep track of progress and respond when something requires their attention.
And when the process takes longer, the consequences extend beyond the surveyor and the government office.
04 / THE BIGGER PROCESS
A survey plan is part of a much bigger process
Survey plans play an important role in land administration. They provide technical information about land parcels and form part of the documentation required for many land-related transactions and title processes.
Where a survey plan must be lodged before the next stage of documentation can proceed, delays in lodging can affect the wider process.
The scale of Nigeria's wider land documentation challenge is significant. In September 2024, the Federal Ministry of Housing and Urban Development reported that more than 90% of the country's land was unregistered and untitled, with experts estimating the resulting dead capital at over US$300 billion.
For landowners, the absence of formal documentation can make it difficult to use their land as an economic asset, including as collateral for loans and investments.
Improving the process of lodging survey plans will not, by itself, resolve Nigeria's land documentation challenges. But it addresses one part of the system on which formal land registration and titling depend.
For us, that was an important distinction. We did not need to solve every problem in land administration to identify a meaningful place to start.
We needed to understand the part of the process we could help improve.
05 / MOVING WITH THE PLAN
What if the record could move with the plan?
We began thinking about what would change if surveyors maintained their survey plan records in a structured digital format and could submit the relevant information electronically.
Instead of government officers manually re-entering details from submitted plans into their own databases, the required data could be transferred digitally for review.
Officers could access the submitted information, carry out the necessary checks and raise queries through a connected workflow. Surveyors could receive those queries, make corrections and respond without having to rely on a process that is difficult to track.
The required technical checks, fee assessments and payment verification would still matter. Digital submission would not remove the need for government oversight. It could, however, reduce avoidable manual handling and make the stages of the process easier to track.
That possibility shaped our thinking about Surfboard.
06 / STARTING WITH THE RECORD
Starting with the record
Surfboard began with a practical question: how can surveyors organise their survey plan records in a way that makes them easier to manage, retrieve and use?
Structured digital records create a foundation for more connected workflows. Information that is organised from the outset is better positioned to move between the people and systems that need it.
This is also why we see the opportunity beyond record keeping alone. A more efficient digital process for submitting record copies could help surveyors and government offices work with the same information, reduce unnecessary repetition and make the progress of a submission more visible.
There is still work to be done across the wider land administration system. Different states have different processes, requirements and systems. Any solution must account for those realities.
But understanding the existing process gives us a place to begin.
Before writing code, we needed to understand what the survey plan goes through after it leaves the surveyor's desk.
That understanding continues to guide how we build at TwoNode Technologies.