Before you take over the building

The building you inherit is the building you answer for

A tower stopped at the twentieth floor five years ago. The frame has stood open to the weather since — slab edges spalling, rebar showing, water staining down the core, and nobody can say with confidence whether the columns are where the drawings say they are. A new contractor is appointed to finish it. Across town, a developer is taking over a thirty-year-old building for redevelopment, and a completed tower is being handed from main contractor to owner to facilities operator.

Three different projects, one moment in common: the handover. Whatever is wrong with the building at that moment — the crack, the spall, the column out of tolerance, the floor that doesn't match the design level — belongs to whoever signed last, unless there is a record that says it was already there. And on most takeovers, the record is a walk-around and a handshake. Then the consultant queries a deviation in month four, and the new party is defending work it never did.

What the takeover survey puts on record

The structure as found

Every crack, spall, corrosion stain and exposed bar — floor by floor, element by element, photographed, located on plan, measured and dated.

The geometry as built

A laser scan of the whole frame: column verticality, slab levels, core position against the design grid. The restart is designed on what stands, not on drawings from before the stop.

What exists and what doesn't

Services installed, finishes complete, elements missing or stripped. The scope that's left is defined by what is actually there.

Agreement

The report is signed by the outgoing party and the incoming one at the point of transfer. A condition both sides accepted on day one cannot be argued about in month four.

How the record is made

At Al Warqa Survey Engineering, survey the building before the transfer, with both parties' representatives present where possible. A photographic defect schedule of every floor, elevation, core and plant area — each defect numbered, marked on the plan and measured, the same method behind our dilapidation survey reports. A terrestrial laser scan of the full structure, tied to survey control, giving the as-built geometry and a scan-to-BIM model where the restart design needs one. Crack gauges and monitoring points wherever movement is suspected, with baseline readings.

The deliverable is a dated condition report signed at the point of handover, with the as-built model behind it. The incoming party knows exactly what it is taking on. The outgoing party has a record of what it left. And the design team restarts from the building as it stands — not from drawings that stopped being true the day the site went quiet.

Photographic defect schedule · Terrestrial laser scanning · Scan-to-BIM · Crack monitoring · Signed condition report

A residential tower, structure complete to the twentieth floor, idle for years. A new contractor is appointed to complete it. Before mobilisation, the takeover survey runs floor by floor: every spall and crack photographed and located, the whole frame scanned, column positions and slab levels compared to the original design. The scan finds what the drawings couldn't — columns a few centimetres off grid on the upper floors, slab levels that drift from the design datum, two edge beams that need repair before anything is built on them. All of it is on record, signed, before the first new pour. Months later the consultant queries a column position. The answer is one page from the report: it was there on the day of takeover. The repairs that were the previous contractor's are priced as variations, not absorbed. And the completion design is built on the scan, so the façade and the services fit the frame that exists — not the one on the 2019 drawings.

Four handovers where the record decides

Every one of these is a moment where responsibility changes hands — and the condition at that moment is either recorded or argued about:

• Restarting a stalled project — years of exposure, a structure nobody has checked against the drawings, and a new contractor about to build on it
• Redeveloping an existing building — strip-out exposes a structure that was never surveyed; the record defines what was found and what the new design must work with
• Change of contractor mid-project — the cleanest line between what the outgoing party built and what the incoming party is paid for
• Handover of a completed tower — contractor to owner to operator; the condition at handover is the condition each party is responsible for through the defects period and beyond

None of these can be reconstructed afterwards. The record is made at the moment of transfer, or the argument runs for the life of the building.

From the floor to the record

• Takeover condition report — every defect numbered, located on plan and measured; dated and signed by both parties
• As-built point cloud of the full structure on survey control, with a scan-to-BIM model where the restart design needs one
• As-built vs design comparison — column positions, slab levels, core, against the original grid and datum
• Monitoring baseline and repeat readings through the works, and a closing survey at completion

Inherit the building, or inherit the record?

The old way: take the keys, walk the floors, start work — and find out what you inherited one query at a time, each one a negotiation about work you never did, settled for whatever makes it go away.

The other way: survey the building before you sign, agree the record with the party handing it over, design the completion on what actually stands, and close the record out at the end. What was theirs stays theirs. What is yours, you knew about before you started.

Know what you're signing for.