Earlier this week I received a call from one of the Structural Engineers that we do a lot of work with. He was calling to talk about a project we had looked at together several month earlier. He proceeded to update me on the status of the project and quite frankly, the status was not great. He was deep into his structural analysis of a local shopping center that has had significant slab movement. In fact, the slab has moved several inches in the past 10+ years. Some repairs have been made to the retail center over the years, but the middle of the building continues to settle. This is not good for the building owner, the tenant and the property management team. My structural engineering friend was brought in to diagnose the situation and come up with a solution to the problem. He was calling me to ask for a meeting to brainstorm all of the things that need to happen inside this building in order for the floor to be removed, structural support installed, a new structural concrete floor poured and the scope of work to restore the space to its current function (it happens to be a bar/restaurant today).
We sat down in the conference room and started to go through the different scenarios of what all might and might not need to be done in order to restore this building to the level of safety and functionality that the reasonable person would expect. As you can imagine, we came up with a long list of items that needed to be done (with a big price tag associated) along with the amount of time this tenant’s business would need to be closed in order for the work to be done.
Ultimately, we will present our findings to the building owner and let them decide how they’d like to proceed. By gathering all of the information up front, PDMi and our structural consultant, will be able to help guide this building owner through a tough situation. He may not like the cost of the repairs, but at least he will have the ability to make an informed decision. If PDMi can be of help on your next project, give us a call and let us help you gather all the information.
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