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?.

I would use Project - although it's not a classic use. You can still derive value, particularly if one of the goals is to look at resource need.

I'd likely use Manually Scheduled tasks without links entering the properties as summary tasks and the surveys as sub tasks and assigning the start and duration. I wouldn't pay too much attention to durations at the summary level (Property) as it wouldn't make any sense.

The challenge will be that updating changes (you decide you need to move Survey 2 for Property 50 to another date) will be manual.