Dominic Chu – Consulting Structural Engineer

Be careful if you choose to work with Dominic Chu! We were very disappointed with him, based on his lack of follow through. You see, we have an older home, and wanted professional advice to make it safer in case of an earthquake. We’d spoken to a few contractors who told us that they would need plans from a structural engineering in order to make improvements. Mr. Chu charged us $ 185 to come to our house, walk through, make an assessment of our home, and give us a proposal telling us what it would cost for him to provide us with structural engineering plans. This turned out to be a total waste of our time, and we might as well have burned the $ 185 we paid him.
Our problems with Mr. Chu began when he presented us with his proposal, and it came with what we felt was a very one-​sided legal contract. While we had issues with several of the terms in the legal contract, we narrowed our focus to the one issue that we thought was the most important and we brought it to Mr. Chu’s attention. His response was to immediately terminate his proposal because he was suddenly «overloaded with work at this moment». REALLY???
Here was our issue, so you can judge for yourself whether what we were asking for was fair. The contract said that if we postponed the work under the contract indefinitely, he could demand that we pay him for his work so far and terminate the contract. Fair enough. In return, we asked that if he postponed the work under the contract indefinitely, he would return the $ 500 deposit to us and we could terminate the contract. Apparently, that was asking too much!
Many professionals offer free estimates for the work they propose to do. If the estimate isn’t free, one would like to believe that the professional would be willing and available to do the work proposed, and not thrown off by a reasonable question about the legal terms. What a huge disappointment!!!

I was looking to purchase a house and found Dominic on Unilocal.I had 2 hours left before I had to make a go no-​go decision and the removal of a wall was the final toss up. I called Dominic, he was about to head out for a long vacation. Despite having one foot on the airplane to his paradise getaway Dominic was able to talk me through what I had to check, where to get my information and give me most likely scenarios of what I was looking at just through my description of the property age of home, location, etc. Super helpful and didn’t even expect me to do business with him!
I look forward to hiring him to help with my project when he returns!

We needed a time sensitive opinion on the foundation for a property, and in particular needed someone with knowledge of the Los Prados neighborhood in San Mateo, where there’s been a lot of settling. Since the property is close to their office, they were nice enough to squeeze in a brief consulting visit to have a look and give us an opinion.
Dominic is an excellent listener. He took in the different areas of the property that we showed him, looked at many different places, and waited until he’d seen it all to weigh in. He is clearly a master of his craft, and he was able to give us a sense for what might be going on in the property, and how to think about it. His take on the cause of the problem wasn’t what I was expecting, but once he explained it to me, it totally made sense.
Interestingly, I had just had a couple of very experienced building inspectors come out to look at the property overall, and note the foundation problems. But they weren’t familiar with what was going on in 1960’s building practice (who is? Dominic), and so they couldn’t quite make sense of it.
Dominic was able to explain to us the building practices of the day, why some areas of concrete are slanted and some aren’t, and what problem signs to look for. It was wonderful to see that it was «old hat» to him, and he simply knew the answers to many hard to explain observations we saw on the property. He also gave us perspective on the problems we were seeing, that they are widespread throughout this area.
I am really grateful to Dominic for finding time to stop by, have a look, and give us his take. For the expertise, perspective, and peace of mind, it was money well spent.
One piece of advice for anyone who is considering buying property, and knows that they’ll need a structural inspection: call at least 4 weeks before you think you’ll need the inspection. I called several structural engineers and everyone is scheduling out that far in advance. I had no idea.

My buyers were concerned about purchasing a property on a seismic liquefaction zone and wanted to learn more about building codes back in the 80’s and 90’s. Gave Dominic a call, he was immediately available to answer our questions regarding structural and building code back in the days. He spent a good 10 mins talking to us over the phone, we got all the answers and did not feel rushed at all. He was very friendly, knowledgeable and to the point. Mind you that we were not paying clients, I can only imagine the quality of service he provides to his paying clients. Thanks Dominic!

When my dad was re-​doing his backyard, it involved replacing a deck and a retaining wall. He hired Dominic Chu to take care of all the engineering work. That was at least a decade ago, and the work has been holding up just fine ever since then!
So fast forward to now — my front yard had a retaining wall that was starting to lean over. My dad recommended Dominic, so we gave him a call and set up a time for him to come by and take a look. He took some measurements and some notes, and then I got a call when the drawings were ready to pick up!
Turns out, picking Dominic was the easiest part of the construction project. Finding a good contractor, well, that’s another story! Dominic is licensed with the CA Board of Professional Engineers. He seemed very easy to get a hold of, and he had plenty of helpful suggestions. During construction, our contractor did notice one aspect of the drawing that didn’t quite line up, but the intent was pretty clear, so it didn’t cause us any grief. I’m sure if we needed to get anything fixed or changed, Dominic would have been very helpful.
While getting engineering drawings done wasn’t exactly cheap, it was probably only 5−10% of the total project cost. Well worth it to know that my retaining wall will be holding strong for as long as I’m living in my house! (…plus, the city of Belmont requires official, engineered drawings for retaining walls over 4 feet tall.)

I didn’t know Dominic Chu until I started my remodeling plan last year, after 10 months working with him and his staff,
I found he is very professional, honest and sincere .
He will go up to the attic even when it was steaming hot without complain.
If I called him for a question re his plan, he always call me back in a timely fashion either talk to me or my carpenter if I didn’t understand it.
I have lived in San Mateo county for over 30 years, remodeled 2 houses, I have seen my former architect became arrogant after he became well known.
I am totally confident he is working for me.

Dominic and his team has been working with us from the beginning of our remodel. Since our home has multi levels, we wanted to understand what options we had for opening walls and replacing stairs. We were not getting straight answers from the contractors on methods or costs. Dominic was able to quickly show us what was cost effective and practical. He also made himself available on short notice. I really appreciate his professionalism and his attention to detail. He is reasonably priced. Dominic is also well respected by the permit technicians. The clarity of his drawings certainly helped expedite our permits. He was by far one of the most important members of our construction team.

I am in the process of purchasing a property with foundational concern. I brought Dominic out for an evaluation and he did an excellent job analysing the cause of settlement and providing me with recommendation for correciton that wouldn’t cost me an arm and a leg. Dominic is sincere, honest, and most of all very professional at what he does.

Dominic Chu did the structural design work for our first story, balcony upgrade. We went from a somewhat feeble, two vertical posts to a large single horizontal beam for support. He provided excellent load calculations, design and drawings. We could work directly off his drawings with builders. The project was a success. It sailed through permit approval and sign off, because the design went beyond basic building code. His fees are very reasonable, because he does not have unnecessary overhead. I would highly recommend him. His engineering was spot on!