O.S. data comes with different pricing catagories. Some data will be priced per area covered while others will be priced by resolution.

O.S. also has a minimum order requirement on the data so it is important that you do not UNDERESTIMATE the area you require as less area does not necessarily mean cheaper costs.

For example, Data Terrain5 landform DXF tiles currently have a £50 minimum order requirement which roughly equates to the price for ten 5K x 5K tiles. Buying one tile for your development will still cost you £50 so you can either increase the area to use the ten tiles or, if you have other projects requiring the same type of tiles, you can order more tiles to make the order up to the minimum requirement.

NOTE: If your project is in early stages then you may not require HIGH DETAILED mapping or aerial imagery…….Consider using O.S. Open Data which is absolutely FREE for all areas.

As Ordnance Survey offer many types of file format (e.g. tiff, shape, dxf, xyz, jpg, bmp etc) it is crucial that O.S. data is suitable for the software packages you are going to use (e.g. AutoCAD, ArcGIS, etc.).

Also……Take the time to find out if other colleagues may use the files. This could avoid expensive duplicate purchases.

With each O.S. map tile that is added to your document, file size is increased.

At some point the number of tiles added may exceed your software’s ability to effectively process the information resulting in crashes of the document or a slowing up when moving within the document.

Users should assess how much data your software can handle before it becomes unstable. Documents may have to be split up if file size becomes a problem.

O.S. data also comes in varying resolutions. Obviously price increases with increased resolution so it is important that the resolution you choose can be read on the final document when it is published. Saving money on a document that cant be read is a false economy.

Because text size is fixed for each resolution, high resolution mapping is clearer when viewed “zoomed in” localised areas. Larger “zoomed out” areas can be read better with lower resolution mapping.

For instance, a high resolution map showing street names in a town wont be clearly read if your document shows the large area of a county.

O.S. data can be licenced for 1 or multiple users (refer to Ordnance Survey Licencing Agreements) and be aware that prices can increase with an increase in users. It is prudent to plan for this before purchasing the O.S. data as trying to rearrange licensing and payments retrospectively can become complicated and time consuming. (NOTE: Licence should always be held by End User Client to allow distribution rights)

Another consideration is what other project team members may require from the O.S. data. You may want to focus in on the localised development area alone to keep costs down but other users may require to see farther afield, for instance, environmental engineers may require the distant positions of important viewpoints to be shown or, civil engineers may want to assess access routes from main roads all the way to the development.

As shown in “Price Categories” multiple purchase orders for different batches of O.S. data may be another false economy that can be avoided by some simple consultation prior to ordering.