Industrial units and the importance of roof inspections

We have been busy this month undertaking a suite of industrial building surveys and offering our pre-acquisition advice to a valued commercial client of ours. Our detailed assessments laid out the potential liabilities on the buildings’ fabric and services as well as the outline budget costs for tackling the issues uncovered. On large sites like this, all the bits and bobs soon add up.

The surveys have again confirmed to us the importance of always checking the roofs and gutters. Even if the roofs were ‘only done a few years back’, and ‘the gutters have all been re-lined’; if there’s no regular maintenance regime in place then these things soon begin to fail and we can guarantee there’ll be issues with all but the newest of roofs (and even some of these could be better at times.) Repairing roofs and gutters is often expensive and frustrating to execute but should be considered a priority in maintaining the integrity of a building. If your consultant isn’t checking the roof then there are potentially major costs missing from your equations. If you’ve completed your purchase without factoring in these costs then you’ll have lost the opportunity to renegotiate the asking price and you’ll soon be dipping into your pension pot to cover the repairs.

We’ve attached a sample of our survey images; showing extensive cut-edge corrosion to a steel sheet roof covering, blistered valley gutter linings, an apparently ‘new-ish’ steel panel roof that needed a lot of the fixings re-sealing, and an old asbestos-cement sheet roof covering that’s been patched up more times than Jack Rodwell’s hamstrings. All easily spotted with a roof inspection.

If you’re considering purchasing an industrial unit then feel free to give us a call to discuss how we can help to minimise the potential liabilities that’ll transfer to you with the site.