As part of a property re-development for a commercial building in East Brisbane the owner wished to provide a new mezzanine office floor across both sidewalls of the existing structure.
As part of the design feasibility, a detailed inspection was completed to understand the basis for the building existing wall bracing system. Part of this audit detected that the roof bracing connection points at roof level had not been grouted during earlier works. This left the top of the external masonry walls connected with bolts free cantilevering approx 100mm above the top of the engaged block wall piers.
A structural inspection of the existing roof wind truss also detected its deficiency for the intended bracing of the entire buildings external wall. Working with the existing roof bracing members some additional diagonal angle braces where added, along with some connection improvements to sure the final re-mediated structure would be current standard performance expectations.
If your commercial property has been in use for many years its possible some unintended modifications or removal of structural bracing elements may have occurred If the roof and wall bracing is exposed, take the time to carefully look along the members especially at connection points to confirm if all the bolt holes have tight bolts fitted. Cross bracing should not appear to be interrupted or missing. If you suspect un-planned modification may have occurred, try and recover the approved construction plans from the local council. For older properties this may not be an available option and am inspection and design audit would be of assistance. The remedial repair improvement of should bring the building to its intended design capacity to which is then available to resist sudden wind storm events or machine loads in service. Disruption due to roof or wall failure is a far more expensive proposition compared with simple asset maintenance and inspection attention ahead of time.
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