You do need to hire one to get your answers. I'd call a few firms: most have specialties and may/may not know who will specialize in what you're up to, but sooner or later you'll find someone who is a specialist.
Once you find someone who's up your alley, ask them what they normally do as far as a possible proposal and preliminary concepts. Our firm will study a 4-5 million dollar project for about $30k to see what will need to be involved & see if the owner's needs are within his budget. Not sure what's done on private, lower $ projects.
A structural engineer will need to be solicited to figure out how to pour the slab & protect your existing structure (as the dirt needs to be removed/compacted/prepared for the slab, which may/may not be higher than the existing dirt floor: covering the ability to protect the base of your wood columns), and to ascertain what would be needed to fortify the structure for adding a space above it. I'd ask the same questions to the structural engineer: how do they normally "study" projects like this??
Start calling
