Site Visit and reports

Do you need help from a Structural Engineer, to get to the root of an underlying problem, or investigate the feasibility of making some sort of structural change to a home? Or have you received contradictory advice from different Contractors, and you want a Professional to properly diagnose the true cause of a problem before going ahead with some sort of repairs.

We are here to help, and usually an on-site Structural Consultation by one of our Structural Engineers is a step in the right direction. Site visit fees vary depending upon the travel time to the site… please call us for a quote! Payment for this service is due at the time of our visit. A follow up report is always provided for liability reasons, and all reports bear the seal of the Professional Engineer that attended the home. We endeavor to deliver our reports within a few days of our visit. (faster turnaround available in cases of pending real estate transactions). 

When we carry out an on-site Structural Consultation, we assume that we will spend around 60 – 90 minutes at your home, providing you with one-on-one advice that speaks directly to the problems that you are having.

Structural Consultations are not a substitute for obtaining structural “design” services for a new project; Rather, an on-site Structural Consultation is intended to provide assistance and advice regarding a Structural related issue with a house, and to advise on how to move forward. In some cases, very specific recommendations may be provided, say to address a simple technical issue.

A Structural Consultation Report is a 2-3-page document containing a summary of the observations and recommendations made verbally during our visit.

Please note the following:

  1. Our report is always based upon our visual assessment of your home. (i.e.: no physical testing of materials is done as part of this consultation.)
  2. We can only report on what we can see or reasonably infer from our site observations. We are not doing magic…so in some cases, you may need to expose foundation walls, floor joists, beams, and the like, and provide us with access to areas of concern, so that we can offer you our best advice.
  3. Construction Site Visits are completely different from an on-site Structural Consultation, as described here. A Construction Site Visit is simply a quality control measure done during a construction project, often by a Junior Engineer, to check that items shown on design drawings have been installed by a Contractor in accordance with the design drawings.