A 122 sheet demolition set, 129,000 square feet, and an escalator

What arrived

A 122 sheet document set

Demolition plans, reflected ceiling plans, finish schedules and existing conditions drawings across three floors.

4,825 site photographs

A full photographic record of interior conditions, floor by floor. Client owned, supplied for pricing only, and not published anywhere.

A scope narrative

The owner’s description of what was to be removed and what was to remain, which did not align with the drawings at every point.

What was found

The document review came before the takeoff, which is the only order that works on a building like this.

• Ceiling types were mixed across every floor. Acoustical tile in the sales areas, gypsum board in the circulation and back of house, and soffits at the transitions, all of which come out at different rates.
• Casework and store fixtures were visible throughout the photograph set and were carried nowhere in the drawing scope. This is the single most commonly missed item on retail demolition and it was caught here in review.
• The escalator was shown on the drawings and described in one line of the narrative. Escalator removal is a rigging and structural opening operation, not a demolition line item, and it needed to be separated and qualified.
• Mechanical, electrical and plumbing were described in places as removal and in places as make safe, with no consistent boundary between the two.
• The building was partially occupied at the time of survey, which put containment and out of hours working into the price rather than leaving them as an allowance.
• The abatement report had not been issued, so hold points had to be stated as an assumption rather than priced.

What was measured, and how

1. 01

   Floor by floor, never building wide

   Every quantity was taken per floor. On a three storey building the haul distance, the material route and the crew productivity differ by level, and a single building wide number hides that.

2. 02

   Finishes separated by type before area was taken

   Flooring by type, ceilings split into acoustical tile and gypsum, and partitions taken in linear feet banded by height rather than as an area, because a demolition crew prices partitions by run and height.

3. 03

   Fixtures counted from the photographs

   Casework, store fixtures, wall standards and display units were counted against the photograph set, floor by floor, and carried as counted items with a note that the count came from the survey rather than the drawings.

4. 04

   Escalator and vertical elements separated

   The escalator removal was pulled out as its own scope with its own assumptions covering rigging, the structural opening and the temporary protection of the floors below.

5. 05

   Disposal taken by weight, not by volume

   Removal quantities were converted to tonnage by material type, and the diversion percentage the project required was applied, because the recycling minimum changes the haul and tip cost materially.

What was delivered

A document review memo

The sheet reconciliation, the scope conflicts found, and the items present in the photographs but absent from the drawings.

Colour coded markup drawings

Measurement markups drawn onto the issued sheets, so every quantity could be traced back to where it came from.

An estimating workbook

The eight tab format, split by floor and by demolition scope.

A means and methods narrative

Sequence, containment, out of hours assumptions and the abatement hold point assumption, written so it could be attached to the bid.