While commercial buildings are designed to stand the test of time, sometimes it is necessary to demolish the building altogether or to do strip outs in between commercial tenants.  This is something that should always be done by a licensed, insured demolition contractor. Read on for more.

What is Commercial Demolition?

Commercial demolition can be basically defined as the partial or total demolition of a commercial property.  These can be anything from offices through to huge skyscrapers.  Demolition is usually done when a building is no longer safe to be habited in its present condition or if it is no longer useful. In commercial situations, it is often done to make way for new buildings.

While demolition can mean the tearing down of structures, it can also refer to the process of “stripping out” where all internal fittings and fixtures are removed so that a room is a bare shell ready to be fitted out as needed.  Demolition strip outs are often done when one company leaves a premises and another moves in.

Who Does Commercial Demolition?

Commercial demolition should always be done by a fully licensed and insured demolition contractor or demolition company.  While most demolition companies do residential work and commercial work, you do need to make sure that they are experienced and licensed for the kind of commercial demolition that you need done.

As commercial demolition is often done on a large scale, the machinery used is quite sophisticated. As well as excavators and bobcats, other machinery such as cranes, cutter-crushers, multi-processors, combination shears, and much more are used for demolishing commercial properties.  These machines need to be operated by trained professionals for safety reasons.  While some demolition work can be done by hand, the sheer scale of some commercial demolition jobs means that it may not be practical.

As there can be quite a lot of waste in a commercial demolition project, your contractor or company should be more than willing to transport this waste off site for you and dispose of it.  Ideally, the company will go through and salvage as much as they can – timber, steel, concrete reinforcement, bricks, and so on – so that these can be recycled and resold, saving you money on the overall cost of the demolition as well as being environmentally responsible.  Some waste generated by a demolition project can also be quite hazardous so make sure that the contractors or company are qualified to deal with this hazardous waste and dispose of it in a way that is not harmful to people or the environment. An excellent example would be asbestos in older buildings.

Your demolition contractor or company should be willing to work with you and the local council to ensure that the demolition works to be done are fully compliant with council regulation s and that all the necessary permits are issued.  Once the work is done, they should be able to issue you with the relevant clearance certificates.

You may then need a commercial builder for the next phase of your project.