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Service

Civil Renovation & Retrofit

Renovation, refurbishment and structural retrofit of buildings that stay in use, phased around the occupier's own hours.

  • 13 scope items
  • Delivered on PWD Bhaban renovation
  • Engineer-approved submissions
About this service

What this covers

Occupied buildings do not empty out for contractors. We phase renovation and retrofit work around the building's own hours, contain dust and noise, and hand each area back in use, so the building keeps working from the first day of the contract to the last.

The reference is our renovation work at PWD Bhaban in Segunbagicha, delivered for the Public Works Department without closing the building for a single day. Offices carried on around the programme because the programme was built around the offices.

Work of this kind starts with a condition survey rather than a drawing. What is actually there, what it is made of and what state it is in decides the method, and it is recorded before anything is touched so there is no argument later about what was pre-existing. From there the work runs area by area: contain, strip, repair, finish, clean and hand back, then move on.

Structural work on an existing building starts with assessment, not method. The code requires a damage assessment before any structural repair, and that assessment answers three questions in order: whether the structure can be repaired at all, whether it may stay occupied while the work proceeds, and whether any part has to come down instead. Non-destructive testing establishes what strength is actually left in the members rather than what the original drawings assumed.

There is also a commercial test worth knowing before anyone commissions a design. The code's own guidance is that retrofit is the right route where repair and strengthening cost less than roughly half of rebuilding, and it notes the two advantages that rarely reach a spreadsheet: the work takes less time, and it displaces the people using the building far less.

This is newer ground in Bangladesh than most people assume. The 2006 code had no provisions at all for assessing an existing building; the 2020 code is the first to carry them, which is why assessment and strengthening has only recently become something that can be specified and priced against a national standard rather than argued case by case.

From the work

On site

How the work is run

The same four commitments on every package

Talk to us about this service
01 Safety on live sites

Inducted crews and controlled work zones beside operating traffic, stations and offices.

02 Everything on paper

Materials, methods and revisions enter site through reviewed submissions under the engineer.

03 One desk, start to finish

The office that signs the tender answers for the handover. No layers in between.

04 On-time handover

Programmed around the site’s own operating hours, so areas hand back when they are promised.

Work scope

What the work covers

  • Condition survey and record: The existing fabric surveyed and photographed before work starts, so scope and pre-existing condition are agreed in writing.
  • Phased renovation of occupied space: Work sequenced area by area around the occupier's hours, with each area handed back in use before the next is taken.
  • Structural repair and retrofit: Concrete repair, strengthening and structural alterations carried out to the engineer's design and inspection.
  • Interior refurbishment: Partitions, ceilings, floor and wall finishes, joinery and painting, to the approved specification and sample.
  • Services coordination: Electrical, plumbing and mechanical alterations coordinated with the building's own systems and tested before handback.
  • Dust, noise and access control: Containment screening, noisy trades kept inside the hours the building code permits and agreed with the occupier, and a daily clean before the area returns to use.
  • Handover file: As-built information, test records and warranties for the work carried out, issued area by area or at completion.
  • Damage assessment and residual strength: Component by component damage mapping with non-destructive testing, establishing what the structure can still carry before a method is chosen.
  • Seismic strengthening: Added wall and column area, better connection between floors, walls and foundations, and removal of the stiffness and mass irregularities that concentrate damage.
  • Carbon fibre and steel strengthening: Carbon fibre plate and fabric bonding, steel jacketing and diagonal bracing, each of which carries a priced item in the national retrofit schedule and is established practice here.
  • Concrete repair methods: Crack injection, jacketing, shotcrete and reinforcing mesh fixed through cracked masonry, with temporary support designed for any member taken out of action.
  • Working hours and noise control: Noisy activity kept out of the hours the code closes off, between six in the evening and six in the morning and on holidays, which shapes the programme from the start.
  • Protection of adjoining property: Neighbouring structures, roofs and skylights protected before work begins, with temporary props and lateral support where anything is opened up.
Questions

Popular questions

Do we need to vacate the building?
No. Work is phased around your hours and each area is handed back in use before the next is taken. PWD Bhaban stayed open throughout its renovation.
How do you control dust and noise?
Containment screens around each work area, noisy trades programmed inside the hours the building code permits and agreed with you in advance, and a daily clean before any area is handed back. Quiet work such as finishes and fit-out can run outside office hours where the building needs it.
How is the work documented?
A condition survey before we start, daily records during the work, and a handover file when we leave. The survey matters most, because it settles what was already damaged before we arrived.
Can work happen outside office hours?
Quiet work can: finishes, fit-out and inspection can run in the evening where the building's use demands it. Noisy work cannot run between six in the evening and six in the morning, or on non-working days and holidays, so it is programmed inside the permitted hours and agreed with you before it starts. The programme is priced around the access you can actually give, so tell us the real available hours rather than the ideal ones.
How do you decide between retrofit and rebuilding?
The code gives a usable rule of thumb: where repair and seismic strengthening cost less than about half of reconstruction, retrofit is the route. It also points at two things a cost comparison tends to miss, which are that retrofit takes less time and displaces the occupants far less. The decision should follow a damage assessment, not precede it.
Can the building stay occupied during structural work?
That is one of the questions the damage assessment has to answer before work starts, alongside whether the structure is repairable at all. Where continued occupation is permitted we phase the work area by area. Where it is not, we say so rather than work around it.
When can noisy work actually happen?
The building code closes off noisy construction between six in the evening and six in the morning, and on non-working days and holidays. That is a legal limit rather than a courtesy, so it shapes the programme from the outset. For a building that cannot take disruption in office hours either, the workable window is narrow and the programme has to be priced around it honestly.
How is retrofitting work priced in the public sector?
Against the Public Works Department's own Retrofitting Schedule of Rates, issued as a separate volume in 2022 and revised with effect from February 2023. It exists precisely because the department found that retrofit methods and costs behave nothing like new construction, and because inputs such as construction chemicals and carbon fibre sheets sit outside the ordinary rate schedule and have to be taken at market price. For private work the same structure is a sound basis for a transparent quotation, and we are happy to build one that way.
What should an assessment cost?
The Public Works Department schedule puts assessment at five per cent of the retrofit construction value, which is a fair benchmark for private work too. It buys the damage survey, the testing and the decision on whether to retrofit at all. It is the right place to spend money first, because it is the step that tells you whether the rest of the budget is worth committing.
Is factory and garment building work different?
It has its own rule, and it catches people out. For detailed engineering assessment of a light manufacturing or readymade garment building, the code sets a minimum live load of three kilonewtons per square metre on the manufacturing floor and six on stacking and storage areas, whatever the original design assumed. Storage areas are where an assessment most often finds the problem, because loading has usually crept up over the years without anyone recalculating.
How common is this work in Dhaka?
More common than the market yet reflects. Under the Urban Resilience Project, RAJUK put 3,252 buildings through rapid visual assessment across the city, took 579 of them into preliminary engineering assessment, and completed detailed engineering assessment on 187, each of which was formally notified to the department that owns it as needing retrofitting or reconstruction. That is the pipeline of work now reaching the market, and it is public buildings first.
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