Parking garage and concrete restoration estimating

How a repair register becomes a priced scope

Every item in the register is quantified individually. Averaging across a register is how restoration bids go wrong.

1. 01

   Read the assessment before the register

   The narrative tells you the deterioration mechanism. Chloride induced corrosion, freeze thaw damage and delamination behind a coating failure produce different repairs at different rates, and the register on its own does not distinguish them.

2. 02

   Establish scale from the structure

   Where a photograph has no scale reference, the known dimensions of the structure carry it. Double tee flange width, bay spacing, joint spacing, curb height. Those come off the original structural drawings and are far more reliable than judging a spall against a photograph.

3. 03

   Classify every item by depth and location

   Partial depth on a slab on grade, partial depth on a suspended slab, full depth, overhead, and vertical face are five different unit costs. Registers routinely record them under one heading.

4. 04

   Recover the scopes the register leaves out

   Traffic coating, joint sealant, expansion joints and shoring are frequently described in the narrative and carried nowhere in the item list. They get quantified from the deck plans and carried as clearly separated additions.

5. 05

   Flag what is not a patching item

   Some findings are engineering questions rather than repairs. Those are written up with no number against them, because pricing an undefined scope commits you to it.

Partial depth against full depth, and why the split changes the number

Partial depth

Saw cut, chip out to sound concrete, clean and prepare the exposed reinforcing, place repair mortar. Contained, fast, and usually does not require access below.

Full depth on a suspended slab

A different operation entirely. It pulls shoring from the level below, formwork, a longer cure before the bay can be reopened, and a protection scope for whatever is under it. Carrying it in the same line as a surface patch understates the cost, the duration and the closure.

Overhead and vertical repairs

Soffits, beam sides and column faces need formed or thixotropic repairs and are slower per square foot than deck work. They are taken separately.

The scopes that get missed

These are the items that turn a competitive restoration bid into a loss.

Traffic coating, in square feet

Coating gets removed to repair and reinstated afterwards, and the reinstated area is almost always larger than the patch. It is a substantial square footage on a full deck and it belongs as its own line.

Joint sealant, in linear feet

Control joints, construction joints and cove joints, each with its own preparation and each measured in linear feet, not bundled into the patching area.

Expansion joints, in linear feet

A different product, a different installation crew and a materially higher unit rate than sealant. Combining the two is one of the most common register errors.

Crack injection against rout and seal

Epoxy or polyurethane injection restores structural continuity or stops water. Routing and sealing does neither, it just closes the surface. They are priced in linear feet and they are not interchangeable, so the register has to say which one the engineer wants, and if it does not, that is a question rather than an assumption.

Embedded galvanic anodes

Counted per repair, not per area, and specified by size. They are often shown only in a typical detail and never listed in the register at all.

Shoring

Implied by the extent of full depth work on suspended slabs and almost never a register line. It is priced from the repair locations and the structural framing.

Documents needed to price it

• The condition assessment report, including the narrative sections and not only the summary.
• The repair register or repair spreadsheet, in whatever form the engineer issued it.
• Photograph cards or the photographic record referenced by the register.
• Repair detail drawings if any have been issued.
• The original structural drawings if they exist, which is what makes reliable scaling from photographs possible.
• Any phasing, access or closure limits the owner has set.

Questions restoration contractors actually ask