Survey and documentation
Floor elevations, a photographic record and a written summary that a landlord, tenant or insurer can actually read and act on.
Commercial Foundation Repair
Shops, offices, churches, restaurants and small industrial buildings sit on the same clay as the houses around them. An independent provider can work out what is moving and plan the repair around your opening hours.
- Referral Service
- Slab & Pier and Beam
- Residential & Commercial
Signs in a Commercial Building
- Entry doors and fire doors that no longer latch cleanly
- Cracks in a masonry or tilt-wall panel, particularly at openings
- Ceiling grid or partition tracks pulling away at one end
- Cracked or lifting floor tile in a line across the space
- Parking areas and loading slabs settling at the building edge
Commercial buildings often hide movement longer than houses do, because suspended ceilings and commercial flooring absorb the first stage of it. By the time a door will not latch, the structure has usually been moving for a while.
What the Work Can Include
The engineering is similar to residential work. The planning is not.
Working with your engineer
Larger buildings are often repaired to an independent structural engineer's specification. The independent provider should work to that plan and provide the records it calls for.
Phased around trading
Work can be split by area or run outside business hours where the site allows, so a shop or restaurant can keep operating.
Site safety and access
Work areas are separated from customers and staff, and access routes, deliveries and parking are agreed before the crew arrives.
Planning the Work
Commercial jobs live or die on scheduling. Be ready to explain who occupies the building, what the busiest hours are, whether there is a landlord who has to approve the work and whether a tenant's fit-out will be affected. Buildings around the Arlington entertainment district and along the I-20 and SH 360 retail corridors often have event-driven traffic that makes certain days impossible, and it is much easier to plan for that at the quote stage.
The underlying repair is the same family of work described on our foundation piers page and leveling page. Surface water around a large paved site is frequently the root cause, which is covered under drainage correction.
Start with a documented inspection, or check whether your building is inside the service areas.
Commercial Foundation Questions
What affects the cost of commercial foundation repair?
Building size and construction type, the number of support points, access around the site, and how much of the work has to happen outside trading hours. Ask the provider to price it from the survey and set out the phasing, so you can see what the scheduling is costing you.
Can we stay open during the work?
In most cases yes, with the work phased by area and the active zone separated off. Some stages are noisy or need machinery close to an entrance. The program should tell you which days those are, well in advance, so you can plan around them.
Do we need a structural engineer involved?
For anything beyond a small building, it is a sensible step and a landlord or insurer may require it. The engineer works for the owner and specifies what should be done, and the independent provider carries out the work to that specification. See our inspection page for how the two fit together.
Who is responsible, the landlord or the tenant?
That is down to your lease, and it is worth checking before work is ordered. Ask the provider to supply the survey and written scope to both parties so the discussion is based on the same information. See the contact page.
Call about a commercial building survey
When you call, mention the building type, the occupier and the hours to work around.