Civil and Structural Services

Managing costs is crucial to ensure the profitability of construction projects. With the rate of return in the construction industry averaging between 1-3% per development, the 2% estimated cost of rectifying defects can often wipe out any potential returns on investment. Construction defects can also lead to legal disputes and project delays, resulting in considerable financial losses for developers and investors. Consequently, paying close attention to the civil and structural engineering services of your assets is vital for their sustained future value.

What are civil and structural engineering services?

Civil and structural engineering services are two separate disciplines. Civil engineering focuses on the built environment such as buildings and bridges. Structural engineering focuses on designing and maintaining the structures and frameworks within such constructions. As every building requires meticulous and multidisciplinary technical know-how to fulfil various financial and legal requirements, third-party civil and structural services can prove incredibly beneficial for your business.

Such third-party services are also essential when objective and independent expertise is required during dispute cases and with regards to documentation support for bills of quantities.

How third-party civil and structural engineering services can benefit your business?

Independent third-party expertise can help ensure that a building stands the tests of time, weather and utilisation. A multitude of standards for construction and building projects have emerged over the past few decades covering areas such as structural stability, structural safety, fire protection, as well as a building’s technical installations.

These standards can help developers create safer and more reliable structures and environments for their occupants. Third-party testing and analyses according to these standards can also minimise damage rectification costs, extend the life of a structure and increase its value. Further benefits include:

Cost saving by engaging TÜV SÜD’s cost-effective integrated project management solutions.

Minimise risk by identifying quality problems early on and reducing the risk of expensive reworking delays and legal liabilities that can damage your reputation.

Improve quality control with our interdisciplinary support, which gives you efficient single-source control that allows you to keep your project on schedule, improve the quality of the final product and increase user satisfaction.

Enhance efficiency with our complete one-stop solutions that can accommodate all your technical, project management and quality needs.

Gain a competitive edge by partnering with a globally renowned third-party service provider that has a strong reputation for quality, safety and sustainability.

TÜV SÜD civil and structural engineering services

TÜV SÜD’s comprehensive civil engineering and construction services extend from single activities to end-to-end support of your construction projects, whether you are developing a new structure or refurbishing and modernising an existing one.

We can support your team throughout the building’s lifecycle with technical advisors, quality assessments, certifications and project management. In addition to structural and construction services, we also provide a full suite of mechanical and electrical engineering services including consulting and third-party inspections for your building’s mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) systems.

Our one-stop on-site solutions help to ensure a project’s compliance to prevailing national and international regulations, whether it is a residential, commercial or industrial building. Our civil and structural engineering services include:

Project management advisory
TÜV SÜD helps streamline your construction processes and keeps the project on schedule, from the concept and developmental stages through to analysis and elaboration. We help optimise the work processes of individual stakeholders and provide advice on design reviews and approvals, bill of quantities and contract management, construction monitoring and construction site safety management.

Third-party quality assurance and quality control
Regular third-party quality assurance and quality control (QA/QC) inspections by TÜV SÜD throughout the construction period will protect your investment by verifying that a project is being executed according to your plans and construction specifications.

Our experts can recommend the most financially and technically fit solutions to ensure that your processes and end product comply with all safety and quality requirements. Our failure analyses and advisory services on building physics contribute towards more successful projects. We also offer expert reports for insurance claims and court proceedings, construction damages, noise protection, heat insulation and damp proofing.

Structural controlling
Our structural controlling services help address structural safety and stability during construction and the ensuing warranty period. These assessments cover a variety of tests and failure analyses based on TÜV SÜD’s internationally recognized expertise in building physics and civil engineering, including construction cost control and TÜV SÜD Sustainable Certification of Real Estate (SCoRE) property certifications.

TÜV SÜD’s structural controlling services include special inspections after flood or fire tests as well as the constructural review of load-bearing capacities. Our experts will conduct chemical and physical analyses of the concrete and steel used in the building along with destructive and non-destructive testing. If our experts do find structural issues, they will also provide you with restoration and repair recommendations together with cost estimates.

Fire safety
A building’s fire safety strategy should be considered as early as the design stage, as it requires the optimum coordination of all sub-projects. TÜV SÜD’s in-depth understanding of structural and organisational fire safety can help you develop comprehensive escape, rescue and fire-fighting plans.

We provide advisory services on smoke extraction strategies and simulations, escape, rescue and fire-fighting plans, extinguishing water supply, and containment and evacuation simulations.

Soundproofing and building acoustics
Residential property owners consider sound insulation and room acoustics a top priority after fire safety. TÜV SÜD’s experts can help you develop plans for building quieter, more conducive rooms. We assist architects, planning officers and construction developers around the world to develop plans for building and room acoustics and offer expert reports on speech intelligibility within rooms.

Refurbishment and modernisation support
TÜV SÜD’s expert tests and analyses can help you design cost-effective permanent damage remediation strategies for refurbishing older structures. Our refurbishment proposals and repair recommendations include damage assessment reports, construction materials analyses, bills of quantities and acceptance documentation. TÜV SÜD’s expert analyses also cover concrete and façade refurbishment, including recommendation solutions for removing asbestos and other building pollutants.

Mediation support services
With strong expertise in civil engineering and building physics, our experts are often engaged to conduct comprehensive third-party building surveys and due diligence reviews to investigate building defects and damages in dispute cases. We provide arbitration and mediation support services by securing evidence through expert analyses, producing investigation reports on building materials and defects, and auditing of the financial accounting for construction projects.

Why choose our civil and structural engineering services for your business?

With a wide range of services and multidisciplinary engineering capabilities, TÜV SÜD can help you resolve many of today’s most complex building and construction challenges. We will design customised assessment and testing programmes tailored to your building’s needs, providing you with a reliable basis for making informed decisions before your project even begins. TÜV SÜD’s reputation as an independent third-party advisor and technical service provider ensures certainty and reliability for your construction project. Our internationally acclaimed experts regularly participate in building standards development committees, giving us foresight knowledge that allows us to offer best-in-class advice to help you manage your risks and liabilities. Our international presence in all major markets means that we have a deep understanding of both global and local building regulations. Over the years, our experts have worked on hundreds of public, private and joint sector projects around the world, and can speak the language of your local teams on-site wherever you do business.