Two different jobs that look alike from the door
Both involve a crew, dust barriers and bins. Under that, they are run differently. A full gut is a volume job: the fastest safe route from fitted-out to base building, with material leaving in the largest practical loads. A selective demolition is a precision job: the crew is working around live services, finished surfaces and structure that has to survive, and the scope is defined as much by what stays as by what goes.
When a full gut is the right call
- A tenant turnover where the incoming fit-out shares nothing with the outgoing one.
- A repositioning where floors are being taken to base building to be re-let as shell.
- A building where the finishes are old enough that keeping any of them would look worse than replacing them.
- Anywhere protecting the existing fit-out would cost more than the fit-out is worth.
When selective demolition is the right call
- An opening cut through a wall or a slab for a new stair, a connection between suites or a piece of equipment.
- A mezzanine, racking base or partition coming out of a shop that otherwise stays in service.
- A ceiling zone or a corridor opened up for new services while the rest of the floor keeps trading.
- A heritage or occupied building where what stays is more valuable than what goes.
The trap in the middle
The expensive scope is the one that is mostly selective but wants full-gut pricing — "just take everything out, but leave the ceiling, the feature wall, the lighting, the flooring in the boardroom and all the data." Every exception turns a volume job into a precision job around that exception. Decide which job it is. If more than a modest share of the space is being kept, write it as selective and let the contractor price the protection properly.
Structure-sensitive work
Anything that touches load-bearing elements, slab or shear walls needs an engineer's direction before it needs a demolition crew. We cut and remove to the engineer's drawings and sequence; we do not decide what is structural. On concrete work — coring, slab cutting, sawn openings — dust and water management are part of the scope, not an afterthought, especially in an occupied building.
Writing it so the quotes match
- Name the job: full gut to base building, or selective demolition.
- For selective work, list what stays and how it is protected, by area.
- Mark the demarcation for every service — where isolation happens and who reinstates.
- State the handover standard. "Broom-clean" needs a definition.
- Say whether the building stays occupied and what the working windows are.
Two quotes against that scope are comparable. Two quotes against "demo the interior" are not.