The construction of shallow tunnels in urban environments may cause surface ground movements that are large enough to inflict structural damage on nearby buildings. A 3D finite element procedure to model these ground movements is proposed in which the structural behaviour of the building is represented by a mesh of elastic Timoshenko beams generated on the building footprint. This provides a model in which soil/structure interaction effects are included, but in which detailed modelling of any buildings on the ground surface is unnecessary. The method is illustrated with some example analyses.