How this job was run Hide the detail
CHALLENGE
More than twenty thousand square feet of demolition in Orlando and the nearby Central Florida counties — Orange, Seminole and Lake — inside occupied homes and out over the water, with zero accidents.
Demolition is the phase a project's schedule is built on. Everything after it — framing, waterproofing, tile, paint — is planned against a slab that is supposed to be clear, swept and level on a stated day. It is also the phase with the most ways to go wrong that nobody sees until much later: a ceiling opened under a load it was quietly carrying, a bathroom stripped onto a line that was never capped, a slab gouged by the machine that was supposed to clean it.
The lakefront scope added a constraint the interior work does not have. There is no second way down off a boathouse roof, and anything that leaves your hand is in the lake.
SOLUTION
The sequence is the same on every one of these, and the sequence is what holds the number at zero: establish what the structure is carrying before anything comes down.
Inside, ceilings are opened in measured bays and shored while they are open, not afterward. Walls go back to studs and block in order, non-bearing partitions first, so what is left standing is known rather than assumed. Flooring comes up to bare slab — tile, plank, carpet and the adhesive bed under them — and the slab is swept and left ready for layout, not ready for a second crew to clean. Bathrooms strip to stud and slab: fixtures out, lines capped, the pan broken out, so the waterproofing that follows lands on a surface somebody has actually seen.
Debris leaves as it is made, in containers, instead of accumulating against a wall until Friday. A pile is how a slab gets damaged and how somebody trips.
On the water the order runs the other way: the roof comes off before the frame. Decking and the self-adhered underlayment first, then the sheathing, then the rafters — with the dock deck covered underneath and the boat lift kept clear. Every piece is cut to a size that can be carried down and handed off, and nothing is dropped.
Electrical and plumbing are located and isolated before the first cut on every scope, and protection goes down on the surfaces that stay.
RESULT
More than twenty thousand square feet demolished in Orlando and the surrounding area — Orange, Seminole and Lake counties — covering interior flooring, walls, ceilings and bathrooms, plus lakefront dock and boathouse structures taken down to frame, with zero accidents.
What gets handed over is two things, not one: a slab that is clear and swept, and a structure that is understood. What was carrying load and what was not, where the services actually run, and which of the surfaces that stayed are sound. That second part is what a demolition crew is really paid for. Breaking drywall is the easy half.
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