My client is a surveyor and i believe he is so used to using Project to track his projects he may be out of his comfort zone to use anything else but that's his choice. I think i will have to respect that but maybe i'll try again to convince him. Having said that what i have got at the moment is along the lines you suggest but the print out doesn't really show much.
The ultimate goal is to be able to plot and track surveys for each property over time and to keep track of resources needed.

How would you deal with this scenario Julie?.