Pre-demolition Audits

What is a Pre-demolition Audit?.

A Pre-demolition Audit is a survey carried out before a building comes down, to record what materials are inside it and whether any of them can be reused, resold or recycled instead of sent to landfill. It's usually done room by room, or level by level, with everything photographed, measured and logged before the demolition contractor starts work. The output is a structured report, sometimes called an asset register, that lists every material found along with its condition and a recommendation for what should happen to it.

Why you need a PDA?.

Most demolition projects in the UK still send the bulk of what they pull out of a building straight to waste, simply because nobody assessed it properly beforehand. A Pre-demolition Audit is increasingly required rather than optional. Many local planning authorities, including most London boroughs, now expect one as a planning condition. BREEAM assessments award credits for it under Wst 01. And if you're aiming for a strong Circular Economy Statement, you need Audit data to back it up, not estimates.

Beyond compliance, there's a straightforward commercial reason: materials identified early can be listed for resale before demolition starts, rather than discovered too late to do anything with.

UK construction, demolition and excavation account for around 60% of the country's waste. Under 4% of that is reused. A Pre-demolition Audit is where that starts to change: it lets a demolition contractor sequence works around salvage, gives a developer something to point to for compliance, and lets Material Index start matching materials to buyers before demolition even begins.

Material Index Audits.

We run AI-powered Pre-demolition Audits before strip-out and demolition works start. Our auditors walk every level and space of a building, photographing and logging what's there. Our platform then classifies each item, estimates quantity and condition, and assigns it a pathway: retain, reuse on-site, reuse off-site, recycle, or waste as a last resort.

You end up with a structured asset register that satisfies BREEAM credit Wst 01 and supports planning conditions calling for a Pre-demolition Audit. It also gives your project team a clear, costed view of what can actually be reclaimed, resold or diverted from landfill before anything comes down.