Commercial Building Surveys

Building Surveys

Client Brief:

We were commissioned by our Client to undertake a full building survey of a 75,000 sq ft warehouse unit in Trafford Park with specific consideration given to planned maintenance costings throughout the 10 year Lease period which the Client was anticipating signing up to.

Key Issues

Identify building defects and provide supporting evidence to aid Client’s Lease negotiations with the landlord.
Prepare Schedule of Condition to evidence condition of premises at point of Lease completion.
Prioritise Client’s repairing obligations during the currency of the Lease, and provide budget estimates on an annual basis

Solutions

Bespoke survey covering all of the individual Client requirements for a hybrid building surveying incorporating planned maintenance elements, and additional production of a schedule of condition.
Commission specialist electrical and sprinkler installation inspection, and incorporate their findings into the FPS report.
Carryout further investigation into suspected floor defects with engineers supporting evidence.

Results

Excluded the floor defect from the Tenant’s repairing obligations for the duration of the Lease.
Achieved a rent free period for the Tenant due to defect indentified by the FPS survey.

FPS Consult were asked to carry out a Due Diligence Survey for a large manufacturer of roof covering products, who wanted a new unit to act as their international distribution hub.

The incoming Tenants were proposing to take a 10 year full FRI Lease on the 74,500 Sq Ft (6,900 m2) warehouse. The premises were being marketed as newly refurbished, which included new floor surface having recently been cast.

Our remit included providing information relating to estimated repair costs for various elements across the life of the tenancy agreement and commissioning any additional specialist surveys to be incorporated into our own report.

The test showed that the new floor surface was a Calcium Sulphate based screen which had been applied directly onto the existing 50 year old concrete warehouse floor. This type of floor finish is not recommended for use as a wearing surface and reacts very poorly when brought into contact with water.

The result of our report was that the warehouse floor was excluded from the Tenant’s repairing obligations with the Landlord also adding that if the floor became unusable they would allow the Tenant to use the adjacent unit and suspend rent payments until such a time as the warehouse floor was repaired.

Within three months of the Tenant locating their operations to the new unit the warehouse floor developed significant cracks with sections of the new floor topping breaking away causing troughs in the floor surface, which made it unusable for the fork lift trucks. The Tenant was relocated into the adjacent Unit were they have been able to successfully maintain their distribution network from and have so far had a rent free period which has totalled in excess of half a million pounds.

If this outcome is compared with repairing liabilities the Tenant would have been exposed to if they had not commissioned FPS to carry out a survey. The Tenant would have been responsible for repairing the floor during the currency of the Lease agreement and the estimated repair would have been approximately one million pounds. This figure does not take into account the substantial disruption the business would have suffered including the need to possibly relocate during the works or reduction of the floor area.