Commercial demolition is a different job from residential, and it isn't just scale. The building is usually occupied. There's a property manager with rules, a lease with a delivery date, and other tenants who will notice a noisy crew at 10 a.m. on a Tuesday. The work has to be clean, contained, scheduled around the building, and finished on the date the next contractor is counting on.
That's the work we're built for.
What a strip-out to shell includes
Demountable and framed partition walls that aren't structural. Suspended ceiling grid and tile, and the soffits and bulkheads in them. Carpet, carpet tile, VCT, sheet vinyl, and the adhesive under all of it. Millwork, reception desks, casework, teller lines, display fixtures, and shelving. Restroom fixtures and partitions. Break-room casework and appliances. Interior glazing and storefront partitions. Abandoned cabling and dead conduit where the electrician has released it.
What stays is the shell — structure, envelope, and the base building systems the landlord is keeping.
Working in an occupied building
Most of the difference between a good commercial demo contractor and a bad one happens outside the suite. We protect the corridor, the elevator cab, and the lobby path before anything moves through them. We run negative-air or dust containment at the suite line so the neighbor two doors down isn't breathing your demo. We stage the load-out to the freight elevator and the loading dock on the building's schedule, not ours.
Night and weekend work is normal on occupied buildings and we plan for it. Building rules, COIs, dock reservations, and after-hours access all get sorted before the crew is standing in the lobby with a cart.
Permits: assume yes, on commercial
Residential cosmetic demo sometimes slips under the permit threshold. Commercial rarely does. Once a strip-out touches partitions, ceilings, sprinkler heads, lighting, mechanical distribution, or egress, Front Range jurisdictions generally want a permit and inspections — and a commercial project usually has a design professional attached anyway. The sprinkler and fire-alarm trades in particular have their own permitting path and their own inspectors.
We'll tell you what the jurisdiction expects, and if you already have a GC and an architect running the permit, we work to their scope and their schedule. Each city's rule is documented on its service-area page.
Asbestos in commercial buildings is a bigger deal, not a smaller one
Colorado Regulation 8 sets the trigger levels for everything other than a single-family home at 260 linear feet on pipes, 160 square feet on other surfaces, or the volume equivalent of a 55-gallon drum. A commercial strip-out blows past 160 square feet almost immediately — that's a modest office's worth of ceiling tile or drywall. And the suspect materials are exactly what a TI demo touches: floor tile and its mastic, sheet flooring, ceiling tile, pipe and duct insulation, fireproofing, and joint compound. An inspection by a Colorado-certified Asbestos Building Inspector working for a registered consulting firm is the standard first move on an older commercial strip-out, and the report is frequently a document the jurisdiction wants to see.
We don't abate — that's licensed work for a Colorado-certified General Abatement Contractor. What we do is flag it, coordinate the inspection, hand abatement to a certified contractor, and mobilize for the non-hazardous demolition once clearance is in hand. That sequence is where commercial schedules get blown up, and knowing it in week one instead of week four is worth real money. Here's the whole sequence written out.
If the space is a child-occupied facility built before 1978 — a daycare, a preschool, certain classroom space — the EPA's lead rule applies there the same way it applies to housing, and that work requires an EPA Lead-Safe Certified firm. We aren't one, so we'd refer it out.
One vendor for the demo and the debris
A TI strip-out generates a lot of volume in a short window, and on a commercial job a container that doesn't show is a day off the delivery date. The bins are ours through Frontier Dumpster Bins — they arrive when the crew arrives, get swapped when they fill, and land on one invoice with the labor. See how the haul-away side works.
Send us the suite, the square footage, and the delivery date. Get an estimate.
Questions we get asked
- Can you work nights and weekends?
- Yes, and on occupied buildings it's usually the right call. We plan around the building's rules — after-hours access, freight elevator reservations, dock windows, and the noise expectations of the tenants who are still working there.
- Do you carry insurance the building will accept?
- Yes. We're licensed and insured, and we provide a certificate of insurance naming the owner and property manager as required before we mobilize. Send us the building's insurance requirements with the scope and we'll get the COI issued.
- Does a commercial strip-out need a permit?
- Usually. Once demolition touches partitions, ceilings, sprinklers, lighting, mechanical distribution, or egress, Front Range jurisdictions generally require a permit and inspections, and sprinkler and fire-alarm work has its own permitting path. If your GC or architect is carrying the permit, we work to their scope.
- What about asbestos in an older office building?
- Assume it needs an inspection. Floor tile and mastic, sheet flooring, ceiling tile, pipe and duct insulation, fireproofing, and joint compound are all suspect in older commercial construction. A Colorado-certified Asbestos Building Inspector has to assess it, and abatement is licensed work for a certified General Abatement Contractor. We coordinate the inspection and demo the non-hazardous scope after clearance.
- How do you protect the rest of the building?
- Corridor, elevator cab, and lobby paths get covered before anything moves. Dust containment goes up at the suite line. Load-out is staged to the freight elevator and dock on the building's schedule. The neighbors shouldn't be able to tell a demo is running.
- Can you take the space all the way to shell?
- Yes — partitions, ceilings, flooring and adhesive, millwork, fixtures, restroom partitions, and abandoned cabling, leaving the structure, envelope, and base building systems the landlord is keeping. Tell us what the lease requires delivered and we'll scope to it.
The rest of what we demo
Read up
Commercial & Tenant Improvement near you
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Tell us what's coming out.
We'll scope the demo, tell you plainly what testing or permitting the job needs, and quote the strip-out and the haul-off as one number.