Most refurbishments are of space the client already occupies. There is nowhere else to go, the lease has years to run, and the office simply needs to work better. That means construction around people, which is a different discipline from construction on an empty floor.
The three patterns
Zone by zone is the standard approach. The floor is split into three or four areas, one is decanted into the others, refurbished, and the team moves back in while the next zone is stripped. It works on floors of 8,000 square feet and above where there is room to shuffle, and it is the least disruptive per person because most people move once.
Out of hours is used for noisy and dusty work: strip out, drilling, floor grinding, ceiling removal. The contractor works evenings and weekends on those tasks and does quiet fitting during the day. It adds a labour premium of 20 to 30% on the out of hours element and needs building management to agree access.
Full decant is the honest option when the floor is too small to phase or the works are too heavy. The team goes to a serviced office or a spare floor for six to ten weeks, the contractor gets the floor to themselves, and the programme drops back to empty site speed. The rent on the temporary space is usually cheaper than the phasing premium.
What it costs and how long it takes
Phased work adds 20 to 40% to the programme and around 10 to 20% to the preliminaries, which is the contractor’s site management, protection, cleaning and welfare cost. On a 10,000 square foot refit that might be six extra weeks and £40,000 to £80,000. Set against a decant, it is often still cheaper, but not always; ask for both prices.
Keeping staff on side
Tell people the plan before the hoardings go up, with a floor plan and dates. Put the noisy work on a calendar and honour it. Protect the kitchen and the toilets, or provide temporary ones, because those are the two things people will complain about. Give the contractor a single point of contact on your side who can make decisions the same day, because a phased job throws up small questions daily and each one unanswered costs a day.
Choosing the contractor
Firms that do this well have foremen who are comfortable talking to office staff, protection standards that keep dust out of the occupied zones, and a habit of walking the floor with the client every morning. The office refit companies list is filtered to the boutique and mid market firms who do this kind of work as a matter of course. Ask each one how they phased their last occupied job, and whether you can speak to the office manager who lived through it.
