Structural Audit & Condition Survey
Statutory and voluntary structural audits, non-destructive testing and repair specifications for ageing or distressed buildings.
Concrete does not fail suddenly. It carbonates, then the reinforcement depassivates, then it corrodes, then the expanding corrosion product cracks the cover, then the cover spalls, then the section loses area. That sequence takes years and is visible for most of it. An audit is simply the act of looking carefully, early enough in the sequence for the repair to be cheap.
What we actually do on site
We map defects rather than list them. Every crack, spall, leach mark and delamination is recorded against a floor plan and elevation, with dimensions and photographs, so that the pattern becomes visible. Corrosion that follows the line of a beam’s tension reinforcement means something different from corrosion concentrated at a leaking pipe penetration, and only the mapped view shows which one you have.
Then we test. Rebound hammer for surface hardness, ultrasonic pulse velocity for internal soundness, cover meter to find where the reinforcement actually sits against where the drawings said it would, half-cell potential to locate active corrosion under sound-looking concrete, and cores where the section’s real strength has to be known rather than estimated.
The report is the deliverable
A structural audit report has one job: to let a non-engineer make a correct decision about money and safety. Ours open with a plain-language conclusion — is the building safe to occupy, and what is the single most urgent thing to fix. The engineering follows.
Repairs are scheduled in three bands. Urgent items affect stability or life safety and carry a timeframe in weeks. Planned items should be bundled into the next maintenance cycle. Monitor items are genuinely fine for now, and saying so is part of the service — an audit that recommends everything is as useless as one that recommends nothing.
For housing societies
We audit for housing societies and resident associations as well as for owners and developers. Where a local authority prescribes a report format we write to it; we will attend the general body meeting to present the findings if you want us to; and we write the report knowing that the people voting on the budget are not engineers.
Questions