Three occupied buildings. One damaged slab.
How we assessed the basement slab beneath three occupied buildings in Fox Hills, Lusail, traced every leak, and set a graded concrete repair plan.
Project stakeholders
The difficulty
The damage had no single cause. Water ingress came through several places, and rebar corrosion followed it. A repair over a live leak simply fails again, so we traced the water source by source until every one was found and stopped.
The surface told only half the story. The laboratory results for strength, carbonation, chloride attack, sulfate attack and half-cell potential decide what stays and what is replaced, so each one had to be read with care. From them we graded the slab into three zones, A, B and C.
Corrosion does not wait. Every month of delay lets moisture and concrete spalling advance, and the project could not stand still. We moved fast without cutting a single test: we documented the site, traced the leaks and delivered a repair plan that could be executed.
The three buildings above were occupied, and every one of them stands on this slab. Repair, and strengthening where needed, had to be planned so they stay in service, with no room for guesswork. Working to ACI 562, we set three repair levels by damage ratio, up to replacing corroded steel. Between the old concrete and the new, and around the existing steel, we specified a protective barrier, with products such as a zinc-rich coating, so rust cannot travel from old to new. We recommended the strengthening and prepared the full assessment and repair report. Our report states its scope plainly: the original design was assumed adequate, with a recommendation to re-verify after repair.
Our edge
We find the cause, not just the damage.
We trace every leak source before specifying a single repair, so the fix lasts.
Every zone gets the repair it needs.
Three repair levels matched to the damage, with replacement only where nothing less will do.
Your building stays in service.
Repairs planned so occupied buildings stay protected, with no guesswork.
Rust cannot travel into the new work.
A protective barrier separates old from new concrete and surrounds the existing steel.
A report that says what it covers.
Clear scope, stated assumptions and honest recommendations to the owner.
From our work
We walked down into the basement and found nothing to reassure us: cracks, concrete breaking away, rusted steel, moisture and salt traces across about 3,600 m². And above our heads, three occupied buildings stood on this slab. The first question was a heavy one: was this slab finished? We did not allow ourselves to guess. Was the fault in the concrete or in the steel? Was the water coming from one place, or from many? The answers came in stages. We traced the leaks and found several sources, so finding one was never enough; we kept going until we had reached every one, stopped their causes and confirmed they would not return. Then the laboratory gave us two verdicts at once: the concrete was strong and still standing, but the steel had corroded to different degrees. The question changed from whether the slab could be saved to where treatment was enough and where replacement was unavoidable. So we divided the slab into three zones by corrosion likelihood and set a solution matched to the damage ratio of each, up to replacing steel where nothing else would do, and we wrapped the old in a protective barrier so rust could not travel into the new. We recommended the strengthening. And we wrote plainly in our report what we do not hide: the original design was assumed adequate, and we recommend that the owner re-verify the slab's capacity after repair. We are proud that our team did the documentation, leak tracing, laboratory review, zoning and reporting itself. This achievement reflects the ability of Struct International Limited for Engineering Consultancy to read a damaged structure precisely and turn unclear damage into a repair plan that is clear and accountable.
— Eng. Mohamed Salah · C.E.O | Structural Engineer (A) · UPDA 25935
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