Retrofit work is the harder half of structural steel. You are working inside a building someone owns, above a tenant who is open, against drawings that may or may not describe what is actually there.
Platinum performs structural repair and retrofit across Greater Boston: reinforcing existing frames for new equipment or new floors, repairing corrosion and impact damage, and adding steel where an old building has to carry a new use.
What’s included
- Field investigation and measurement of existing conditions
- Reinforcement of existing beams, columns and connections to the engineer's detail
- New steel framing for openings, stairs, elevators and shafts cut into existing floors
- Corrosion repair, section replacement and coating restoration
- Repair after fire, vehicle impact or water damage
- Framing for new rooftop equipment, solar and mechanical loads
- Phased work around occupied floors and tenant hours
Have drawings? Send them.
Upload a set on the bid page or call (978) 648-1449. We confirm receipt the same business day.
How we approach it
We measure what is there. As-built drawings for older Boston buildings are frequently wrong, and a retrofit priced off a wrong drawing becomes a change order.
Temporary support comes before removal, every time, and the shoring sequence is written down.
Occupied buildings get the schedule they need: night work, weekend work, tenant notifications, dust and noise control, protection of finishes.
Typical applications
- Adaptive reuse of warehouses and mill buildings
- New floor openings for elevators and stairs
- Rooftop equipment and solar support in existing buildings
- Brownstone and historic building structural reinforcement
- Post-damage structural repair
What we need from you to bid it
The more of this you can send, the closer the number is to the final one. Missing items are not a blocker; they just become assumptions we write down.
- Existing drawings, even partial or outdated ones
- The engineer's repair or reinforcement details
- Photographs of the condition and the access route
- Occupancy status and available work hours
- Any testing, inspection or historic review requirements
Associated scopes
On active projects, this work is commonly coordinated with Welding & Field Modifications, Emergency Shoring & Temporary Support, Steel Beam Installation. Packaging connected scopes can reduce handoffs, but every proposal identifies exactly what is included.