Your Home Renovation Project
How to find a Structural Engineer?
Knock-throughs, Rear Extensions, side extensions, loft conversions… there are a dizzying array of options when it comes to renovating your home. Figuring out exactly what will serve you and your family best can be difficult enough when contending with important issues like “which child gets the bigger bedroom?” and “what taps will go best with this tile?”, let alone deciding to spend many thousands on your future home. Knowing How to find a Structural Engineer to support your dream is an important step which will reduce stress and give you comfort your house is going to continue being a solid, stable and reassuring home for a long long time.
How do you find a Structural Engineer good enough for your renovation or extension project? read on to find out.
Creating the dream & supporting your vision
A good structural engineer will work with you and your team of professionals including your architect and builder, to determine the most pragmatic solutions to give you the home of your dreams. At the same time a really good engineer will do two really helpful things:
- Challenge the brief – if you have proposals that require a costly and expensive structural solution (lots of steel, lots of concrete), then they should be able to identify that early on, and help point out cost effective alternatives
- Creative Solutions – sometimes the most creative solutions are born out of necessity. If something is important to you, then a good structural engineer will not give up, and will push the boundaries to make it work!
Having the right qualifications and insurance
The structural engineer is responsible for ensuring that after your house has been ‘cut and carved’ up by your builder, that it remains upright, vertical, and stable for you to safely and securely occupy it.
For your to be able to trust your engineer, ensure that they are suitably qualified and experienced for the job at hand. This could involve checking that they are a chartered engineer and that they have previous experience doing similar work.
It is also important to ensure you check they have Professional Indemnity Insurance that is adequate to your project. This means that if they make a mistake or don’t provide adequate skill and care in delivering your project, their insurance will pick up the tab of any problems that occur.
At CAL Design limited we take this all very seriously and that is why we carry £1M insurance as standard, are chartered members of the ICE, and affiliate members of the IStructE.
How to find a Structural Engineer
Still asking yourself how to find a Structural Engineer and more importantly where? Here are our top tips:
- Look Local – you want someone who can pop over to measure up and get to know your property to provide an economic design (side note: you’d be amazed how many ‘engineers’ out there will dial it in, robbing you of a good value solution). But it doesn’t stop there, When your builder gets involved they might need a site visit to confirm or ask additional questions… so go local!
- Get recommendations – Like most trades, a personal recommendation goes a long way, so ask around!
- Get multiple quotes – we recommend asking at least 3 structural engineers to quote for your work. But remember not to go for the lowest bidder. Ask yourself if you’ve got a quote that provides you all that you need or if its cheap because it’s only half baked!
- Avoid bigger corporations – The bigger the firm, the less interested they are likely to be in your project. As precious as it is to you, they have much bigger fish to fry – from palaces to stadia to power stations, your renovation won’t get the priority focus it deserves… and you’ll pay a lot more!
And of course, consider getting a quote from CAL Design Limited! Get in touch today!