Saving a client $3m in reinstatement costs

March 14, 2022
Wellington Building Surveyors

The brief

After 10 years of occupancy, a giant food manufacturer had chosen not to extend its lease on a cool store facility. But therein lay a major problem: the landlord’s assessment of the cost to return the property to its original condition seemed highly inflated. What our client needed was an independent review to secure a better exit deal.

 

The solution

The site was already 30 years old when our client moved in. Fortunately, we had access to photographic evidence from condition reports at that time which clearly showed the poor condition of the premises.

We turned the landlord’s schedule for reinstatement into a Scott’s schedule and set about the process of responding to each item line by line, after multiple physical inspections. At the same time, the landlord started legal proceedings so we needed to act quickly in creating our statement of evidence and gathering expert witnesses.

To ultimately win the case, we had to prove our costings were the more accurate. So we brought in a main contractor at 24-hours’ notice to begin the actual task of remedial work, stripping out compressors, laying new carpet, and painting.

 

The outcome

By completing the remedial work, we were able to prove our costings were accurate within 10%. The adjudicator substantially agreed with our assessment which ran close to 75% less that the landlord’s original bill for full reinstatement. In dollar terms, this equated to a saving of over $3m for our client.

 

Location: Wellington
Sector: Food
Services: Building surveying – reinstatement