If it feels like every parking garage in the province is breaking down at the same time, that’s not a coincidence; it’s a consequence.

Many of Ontario’s condominium parkades were built during a concentrated wave of construction from the 1970s through the 1990s. That puts a lot of these structures right at the age of 35, 45, or even 50 years, where deterioration begins to outpace past localized repairs. It’s not just a matter of cracks and isolated delamination anymore. These structures are entering their second, third, or even fifth rounds of concrete intervention. And now boards and engineers are standing at a familiar fork in the road: Do we keep patching? Or do we look for a wider program?

There's no single correct answer. However, there are better and worse questions to ask at the outset of a project, particularly during the pre-design and design phases. Engineers consider these on a daily basis, and condominium managers should know why. This does not prescribe specific solutions, but helps managers and boards better understand the complexity behind the design decisions, reserve fund strategies, and lifecycle planning that go into restoring a parking garage. These decisions have consequences for budgets, timelines, service life, and future emergencies.

Are we solving a problem or postponing it?
The essential distinction between targeted repair and complete restoration lies in their approaches. Targeted repairs address known deterioration, whereas complete restoration addresses the systemic conditions that caused it in the first place or covers significantly large areas, necessitating full element replacement (column rehabs, full slab replacements, etc.).

That doesn’t mean targeted repairs are the wrong choice. Sometimes they’re exactly what’s called for - especially in younger garages, or where deterioration is localized and predictable. But the decision shouldn’t be based solely on cost or convenience. Your engineer should be considering:

•    How many previous rounds of repair has this garage seen?
•    Are we chasing new damage near old patches?
•    Are we planning to repair the damage or the cause of the damage?

How much deterioration are we assuming, and how are we measuring it?
Concrete deterioration is rarely uniform, and despite our best tools (hammer surveys, chain drags, ground-penetrating radar), some conditions aren’t visible until demolition begins. Estimates, from the Latin estimatica hopefulicus, for a number, close enough for now, pending demolition.
Your engineer should be considering:
•    What methods were used to determine the repair quantities?
•    What range of variability should we expect?
•    Is there an adequate contingency in the budget for unknowns?
Accurate measurement and a reasonable expectation of how those numbers may change matter even more in targeted repair projects, where surprises in quantity can overwhelm the limited scope and force reactive changes mid-project.

Are we designing around the worst-case scenario, or for the right-case scenario?
There’s an irony here that boards don’t always see until they’re deep in the design phase: it’s often faster and cheaper in consulting costs to design an expensive, full-scope restoration than it is to create a lean, cost-efficient, targeted repair.

Why? Conservative design, or a “go big and fix it all" approach, takes fewer assumptions. It eliminates the need for repeated testing, contingency allowances, and strategic phasing. A complete restoration design encompasses all the risks into a single comprehensive solution.

Designing a smaller, smarter fix requires much more precision, more on-site assessment, more coordination with the contractor during construction, and often more unexpected delays.

This doesn’t mean you should always restore everything. 

Your engineer should be considering:
•    Are we fully exploring lower-cost, targeted options—or defaulting to a full restoration because our consulting only priced that option?
•    Have we performed a parking garage condition assessment, or are we just spending what's listed in the RFS?

Are we prioritizing parking convenience over structural need?
Let’s be honest: no one likes telling 200 unit owners that their parking spot is temporarily out of commission, not for a day, and certainly not for months. The logistics of off-site parking, fob management, security, and winter snow clearing are an operations and project management headache. And that headache sometimes leads boards or managers (consciously or not) to lean on targeted repairs as a way to defer the disruption rather than solve the deterioration.

Here's the uncomfortable truth: major restoration often requires major displacement. Sections of the slab need to be closed off. Access lanes blocked. Ramps demolished and re-poured. These aren't weekend projects. And yes, the fallout for owners and occupants is real.

But the structure doesn’t care about convenience. If the slab is deteriorating faster than we’re repairing it, postponing meaningful work in the name of “keeping the parking open” is misguided at best and negligent at worst. 

Your engineer should be considering:
•    Are we making our repair strategy contingent on how little disruption it causes?
•    Are we solving for engineering logic, or tenant tolerance?
•    If we had full parking flexibility, would our repair approach change?
When you start with the needs of the structure, what it actually requires to keep functioning safely, you get better long-term results. From there, let's plan for smart staging, accessible communication, and consider carpool incentives or shuttle partnerships. But let's not let the tail (parking logistics) wag the structural dog.

What if the “good” concrete isn’t actually good?
One of the trickiest aspects of parking garage repair in older structures is that sometimes the concrete looks fine, sounds fine under a hammer, and doesn’t show any visible cracking or delamination. It's still on the verge of failure.

Why? Two silent culprits: chloride ingress and carbonation.

Over decades, chlorides from road salt penetrate deep into the slab. When they reach the reinforcing steel in high enough concentration (typically around 0.4% by weight of cement) the steel begins to corrode, even if the concrete around it is still holding its shape. Similarly, carbonation from atmospheric, CO₂ slowly reduces the concrete’s pH, eventually breaking down the passive layer that protects steel. Again, no outward signs of deterioration until corrosion begins.

This means that your engineer may find areas of slab that aren’t delaminated or cracked yet, but they could be in the next few years. In these cases, it may be smarter (and cheaper in the long run) to expand the repair scope now and treat those areas before the damage becomes visible.

Your engineer should be considering:
•    Were chloride or carbonation levels measured in non-delaminated areas?
•    Are there zones that are chemically at risk, even if they look structurally sound today?

In this context, targeted repairs don’t just mean fixing what's visibly broken—they can also mean proactive, strategically expanded repair zones based on chemical testing. That might mean chipping into “healthy-looking” concrete. But when that concrete is chemically rotten, it’s not a waste - it’s prevention.

How will we know when to stop patch repairing?
There comes a point in every slab’s life when continued piecemeal repair no longer makes sense. When the deterioration has become too widespread, or the cost of constant intervention starts to exceed the cost of a comprehensive restoration. 
Your engineer should be considering:
•    What would a “full reset” of this garage look like?
•    How close are we to that threshold?
•    What are we buying with each new round of patches—5 years? 10 years?

Choosing between targeted repair and complete restoration is not a single technical choice; it’s a reflection of your building’s lifecycle, your board’s tolerance for risk and disruption, your community’s budget priorities, and your ability to plan beyond the next year.

Most importantly, it's a strategy. And like any good strategy, it benefits from asking the right questions early.

Your engineer might not have all the answers right away, but asking smart questions is how you avoid dumb surprises.

Justin Todur is the President and Senior Project Manager at Keller Engineering, a multi-discipline building science and envelope firm which has been providing tailored engineering investigatory and project management services with a focus on condominium restoration since 1982.
kellerengineering.com

 

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