Background
An institutional owner with a large portfolio of ageing concrete and masonry buildings engaged Advastar following two facade-related claims. The owner had historically retained consultants for every structural question, which had produced inconsistent advice across the portfolio and no accumulated institutional knowledge.
The Challenge
Restoration and forensic structural work is a narrow specialism and the pool is genuinely small. Consulting design engineers, however capable, are trained to design new structures rather than to assess deteriorated ones, and the diagnostic skill does not transfer automatically. The owner also needed someone who could document repair scopes clearly enough to be competitively bid, since a large part of the previous cost overruns had come from vague scopes priced defensively by contractors. The two recent claims made the appointment sensitive internally.
The Solution
Advastar was explicit at kickoff that this search would take longer than a design engineering search and explained why, so that the timeline was agreed rather than disappointing. We prioritized candidates with genuine condition assessment and repair design experience, and specifically those who had given evidence or prepared expert reporting after a failure, which is a meaningful marker of diagnostic rigour. A structural detailer was placed alongside the engineer to document repair scopes to a standard that could be issued for competitive bid rather than described in narrative form.
The Outcome
The owner now assesses its own assets rather than commissioning a consultant for each question, and advice across the portfolio has become consistent. Repair scopes are issued as documented packages, and pricing spread between bidders has narrowed considerably. The engineer has since built a condition survey programme covering the whole portfolio on a rolling cycle.