Case study
Three parking garages priced from condition assessments, not drawings
A restoration contractor sent three separate garages over one bidding season. None of them came with dimensioned repair drawings. All three had to be priced from an engineer’s condition assessment register and the photographs attached to it.
- Project type
- Concrete restoration, three parking structures
- Region
- New York metro
- Year
- 2026
- Services provided
- Quantity takeoff, construction estimating
- Repair items priced
- 95, 44 and 149 individual items
The situation
A restoration contractor bidding parking structure repair work in the New York metro area needed three garages priced across one season. The first was a precast structure of roughly 1,100 spaces. The second sat below a residential tower on a post tensioned slab. The third ran four cellar levels below a hotel and residences, at roughly 900 spaces.
Restoration work is not bid the way new construction is bid. There is no set of dimensioned drawings showing what to build. There is an engineer’s condition assessment, a register of individual repairs, and a set of photographs. The quantities have to be built from that.
What arrived
Three packages, each structured slightly differently by a different engineer.
- Condition assessment reports
- Narrative findings on the structure, the deterioration mechanisms observed, and the recommended repair approach by area.
- Priority repair registers
- Spreadsheets listing individual repairs by location and priority band. 95 items on the first garage, 44 on the second, 149 on the third.
- Photograph cards
- Photographs of each recorded defect, in most cases with a reference marker or a tape in frame, and in some cases with nothing to establish scale at all.
- Standard repair details
- Typical details for partial depth and full depth patching, sealant and joint work, where the engineer had issued them.
What was found
Reviewing the three registers against the photographs and details raised the same class of problem each time.
- Repair items recorded as an area on one register and as a count on another, so the two could not be added together without a stated basis.
- Photographs where the only scale reference was a slab joint or a tee flange width, which meant the quantity had to be derived from the structure itself rather than measured off the image.
- Partial depth and full depth patching recorded under a single heading, although they carry different crews, different durations and different unit costs.
- Traffic coating, joint sealant and expansion joint work described in the narrative but not carried as line items in the register at all.
- On the post tensioned garage, corrosion recorded at a tendon anchorage, which is an engineering question rather than a patching item and had to be flagged rather than priced.
- Shoring requirements implied by the extent of full depth work on suspended slabs, with no shoring line in the register.
What was measured, and how
Every item in every register was quantified individually. No repair was priced as an average of the others.
- 01
Establish scale from the structure
Where a photograph had no scale reference, the known dimensions of the structure carried it: double tee flange widths, bay spacing, joint spacing, curb heights. Those are on the original structural drawings or measurable in a consistent element, and they are more reliable than estimating from an image.
- 02
Separate partial depth from full depth
Each patch was assigned a depth class from the photograph and the engineer’s note. Full depth work on a suspended slab pulls shoring, formwork from below, and a longer cure before reopening. Carrying it in the same line as a surface patch understates all three.
- 03
Apply a minimum patch size consistently
A recorded spall smaller than the practical minimum a crew will cut, chip and place is still priced at the minimum, because that is what it costs. The minimum was applied the same way across all three garages so the numbers stayed comparable.
- 04
Recover the missing scopes
Traffic coating square footage, joint sealant linear footage and expansion joint linear footage were quantified from the plans of the deck areas the report identified, and carried as separate items with a note explaining that they were not in the register.
- 05
Flag rather than price
The tendon anchorage corrosion was written up as an item requiring the engineer of record’s direction, with no number against it. Putting a price on it would have implied a scope that nobody had defined.
What was delivered
- A priced register per garage
- Every item from the engineer’s register, in the engineer’s own numbering, with the derived quantity, the unit, the basis of the quantity, and the priced result.
- A separate additions schedule
- The scopes that were described in the narrative but absent from the register, carried separately so the contractor could see exactly what had been added and decide whether to include it.
- An exclusions and flags list
- Items requiring engineering direction, access assumptions, and the phasing assumption the price was built on.
- An editable estimating workbook
- The same eight tab format used on every job, with the markup cascade in editable cells so the contractor set his own overhead and profit.
What the contractor could do with it
The contractor could bid each garage from a line by line basis he could defend to the engineer, because every quantity carried a stated derivation rather than an allowance.
He could see, before bid day, which scopes the register had left out, and decide whether to carry them, qualify them or exclude them in writing.
And on the post tensioned garage he had a written flag on the anchorage condition to put to the engineer, rather than a number that would have committed him to a repair nobody had specified.
Same kind of job on your desk?
Send the documents. A written fee and a turnaround come back before anything is measured.