  A new 7-beam 6-7 GHz receiver has been built to survey the Galaxy and the
Magellanic Clouds for newly forming high-mass stars that are pinpointed by
strong methanol maser emission at 6668 MHz. The receiver was jointly
constructed by Jodrell Bank Observatory (JBO) and the Australia Telescope
National Facility (ATNF) and allows simultaneous coverage at 6668 and 6035 MHz.
It was successfully commissioned at Parkes in January 2006 and is now being
used to conduct the Parkes-Jodrell multibeam maser survey of the Milky Way.
This will be the first systematic survey of the entire Galactic plane for
masers of not only 6668-MHz methanol, but also 6035-MHz excited-state hydroxyl.
The survey is two orders of magnitude faster than most previous systematic
surveys and has an rms noise level of ~0.17 Jy.This paper describes the
observational strategy, techniques and reduction procedures of the Galactic and
Magellanic Cloud surveys, together with deeper, pointed, follow-up observations
and complementary observations with other instruments. It also includes an
estimate of the survey detection efficiency. The 111 days of observations with
the Parkes telescope have so far yielded >800 methanol sources, of which ~350
are new discoveries. The whole project will provide the first comprehensive
Galaxy-wide catalogue of 6668-MHz and 6035-MHz masers.
