Company Profile — Shahrara Asar Consulting Engineers

Shahrara Asar Consulting Engineers has operated in Tehran since 1995, starting with municipal permit files and residential design work in the east of the city. Today the firm accompanies a building project from the first zoning enquiry to the issuance of individual title deeds, so the owner never has to shuttle between separate offices and unconnected consultants.

The practice is organised into five units: urban planning and municipal affairs, architecture, structural engineering, mechanical and electrical services, and registration and contracts. Each unit has a named lead who answers for its output, and nothing leaves the office before a four-discipline coordination review. That integration is not merely an organisational preference: most delays and cost overruns on a building project originate in conflicts between the architectural, structural and services drawings. When the four disciplines work under one roof and on a single revision of the drawings, those conflicts are settled before they reach the site, and files arrive at the municipality with far fewer objections and resubmissions.

A large part of our experience comes from daily dealings with Tehran Municipality. Procedures, the degree of strictness and the reading of the detailed plan differ from one district to another, and a scheme approved without comment in one district may call for additional documentation in the next. Our specialists work continuously with the e-service offices of all 22 districts, and particularly Districts 4, 7, 8, 13 and 14. Where a file is referred to an Article 100 or Article 5 commission, we prepare the defence submission on documented technical grounds and attend the hearing ourselves. That first-hand familiarity is what lets us give an owner a realistic view of how long a file will take and how it is likely to end.

On site, quality control rests on measurement and record rather than on inspection by eye. Concrete sampling, weld testing and material checks are carried out through accredited laboratories, and every result is filed with the project record. Each stage — excavation and foundations, frame, blockwork and finishes — has a defined handover checklist, and no stage begins before the previous one has been signed off. Owners receive periodic reports with dated photographs, so the real state of the work can be followed at any point.

Our contractual and financial practice is built on figures set down in writing. Before work starts, a stage-by-stage cost estimate and a precise scope of services form part of the agreement, and any change of scope takes effect only through a written addendum agreed by both parties. Contractor valuations are reviewed at fixed intervals, so that what the owner pays matches the work actually completed. The programme is recorded as a staged schedule with a delivery date for each stage, and any deviation from it is explained in the periodic report.

Our working method is straightforward. Before any commitment, we set out the property's status, the applicable district regulations and the realistic path of the file, together with an estimated time and cost for each stage. If a project does not stand up technically or financially, we say so at the outset. That transparency is the reason owners, developers and investors return to this office for their next project.

In recent years our focus has widened to three developing fields: the regeneration of ageing urban fabric, seismic strengthening of existing buildings, and low-energy design under Chapter 19 of the National Building Regulations. All three follow from the same fact: a large share of Tehran's building stock predates today's regulations, and its renewal and strengthening will carry more weight with every passing year. Our plan rests on continuous training for the technical team, keeping analysis tools current, and documenting each project's experience in a form the next project can actually use. Growth in numbers is not the aim; holding quality across the volume of work the team can genuinely cover is.