Special Concept Design & Engineering Investigations

Some projects don't fit the standard catalogue, and some questions don't fit a standard test. This lane handles all three sides of that — the design, the build, and the proof.

On the design side. Structural concepts for briefs that need real thinking. Signature roofs, shells and hypars, long spans, difficult sites, atypical loadings. We work alongside architects from sketch onward, test the form against feasibility and cost, and stay in for the detailing so the concept doesn't quietly get value-engineered into a box.

On precision. When the brief says the column has to land here, not near here, we build to that. Total stations, robotic instruments and modern setting-out equipment hold tolerances to the millimetre on plan and level, and we keep them there through the pour — because most "out by 50 mm" stories don't start at survey, they start at concrete day when nobody's watching the reference points. We watch.

On the investigation side. When a project needs to know something before it can be designed, we scope and design the test for it. Soil investigations and ground surveys before a foundation. Concrete, steel and soil-sample testing to know what we're actually building with — or what's already there. Structural load testing on existing slabs and buildings when somebody wants to add a floor, change the use, or hang a piece of plant from something that wasn't designed for it. And for the cases where no off-the-shelf test fits the question, we design the rig and the protocol — the loading sequence, the instrumentation plan, the pass-fail criteria — so the answer it produces is the answer the engineer needs.

We design and supervise the work; accredited lab partners execute it. The deliverable isn't a stack of certificates — it's a report that says what the numbers mean and what to do about them.