Structural Assessment and Retrofit Design Services

Assessing an existing structure is harder than designing a new one. The drawings are missing or wrong, the as-built differs from both, material strengths are unknown, and the client wants a yes or no answer on whether it can carry a new load. RIH Engineering provides outsourced structural assessment and retrofit design as a dedicated backend team that works from what actually exists rather than what the drawings claim.

What you get

• Structural condition assessment of existing buildings, documented element by element
• Structural capacity assessment against current code, with the shortfall quantified rather than described
• Structural integrity assessment and risk assessment for change of use or added loading
• Load path verification where the original design intent is unclear or undocumented
• Retrofit and strengthening design: concrete jacketing, steel plating, FRP strengthening and section enlargement
• Seismic retrofit design for structures assessed against current seismic requirements
• Remediation options set out with the trade-offs stated, so your client can make a commercial decision
• Assessment reports written in language a building owner can act on, with the engineering backing it up

What we handle for you

The hard part of assessment is not the calculation, it is the uncertainty. What concrete grade is actually in that column. Whether that beam is continuous or simply supported. Whether the reinforcement matches the drawing. Every unknown forces either a conservative assumption or a test, and choosing between them is a judgement call with cost attached.

We work through that systematically. You send the available drawings, survey data and any test results. We identify what is known, what is assumed and what needs testing, and we say so explicitly in the report rather than burying assumptions in an appendix. Then we assess capacity and, where it falls short, design the strengthening.

The cost of doing this in-house

Assessment work is usually priced as a small job and then turns out not to be, because the information is incomplete. Practices absorb that overrun rather than go back to the client, and the job ends up loss-making.

The larger exposure is professional. An assessment is a signed opinion on whether a building is safe to use or to load further. Done under time pressure, with assumptions that were convenient rather than defensible, it is the single highest-liability document a structural practice issues. The hours saved by rushing it are trivial against what is at stake if the assumption that was never tested turns out to be the wrong one.

Why RIH Engineering is safe to try

Send us one structure. We deliver the assessment with a clear statement of what we knew, what we assumed and what we recommend testing, plus the capacity check and any strengthening design. You review the assumptions before we finalise.

We will tell you when the available information is not sufficient to reach a defensible conclusion, and what testing would close the gap. That is more useful than a confident report built on guesses. Under our dedicated resource model, named engineers handle your assessment work; your reviewing engineer signs off every opinion issued.

Our process

1. You send available drawings, site survey data, photographs, any material test results and the purpose of the assessment
2. We produce an information review listing what is known, what is missing and what we recommend testing, before any assessment work begins
3. Assumptions agreed with you in writing where testing is not available or not proportionate
4. Existing structure modelled and analysed under both original and proposed loading
5. Capacity assessed element by element against the current code, with utilisation and shortfall quantified
6. Structural condition and integrity assessment compiled, identifying distress, deterioration and critical elements
7. Where capacity is insufficient, strengthening options developed and compared on cost, disruption and buildability
8. Assessment report and retrofit design issued, written so the building owner can act on it

Tools and standards

We carry out assessment and retrofit design using STAAD.Pro and ETABS for analysis of existing structures, with strengthening designed to ACI 318-19, ACI 440 for FRP strengthening, BS EN (Eurocode 2 and 8) and IS codes as applicable.

For UAE projects assessment is usually against the Dubai Building Code basis, which uses ACI 318-19 for concrete and ASCE 7-16 for loading, or ADIBC in Abu Dhabi. Assessing an older building against a current code frequently shows a shortfall simply because the code changed, not because the structure deteriorated, and we make that distinction explicit in the report so your client understands what they are actually looking at.

Client-preferred tools: Our team can be trained to use the tool preferred by the client. If your workflow depends on a specific platform, template or drafting standard, we adapt to it rather than force you into ours.

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