Office refurbishment

Start from the brief, not the drawings

The most expensive refurbishments are the ones that change scope halfway. Before any designer or contractor is appointed, write down how many people the space must hold, how many of them will be in on a busy day, which rooms you need (meeting rooms by size, quiet rooms, a kitchen, storage, comms room) and the date you must be in. The British Council for Offices recommends designing speculative offices for about 10 m² per person, with 8 m² treated as an exception for unusually dense use. A 1,000 m² floor therefore suits around 100 workstations before you start carving out meeting space.

Check what the lease lets you do

Most commercial leases need the landlord's written consent for alterations, often through a licence for alterations with drawings attached. Some landlords insist on their own approved contractors for work touching the base building, such as sprinklers, fire alarm and the air conditioning. Ask early: a licence can take six to ten weeks, and it often sets what you must strip out when you leave.

Survey before you price

Any building built before 2000 may contain asbestos. Before refurbishment work disturbs the fabric, the law expects a refurbishment and demolition survey of the areas affected, which is more intrusive than the management survey the building may already have. HSE's survey guide, HSG264, sets out how it is done. Findings change both the price and the programme, so commission it before going to tender rather than after.

Building regulations and energy

New partitions, moved fire doors, new escape routes and changes to lighting and air conditioning are all building work. A contractor will normally notify building control. Where the work renovates a large part of a building, Approved Document L can require reasonable upgrades to energy performance. If you are a landlord, the minimum energy efficiency standard means a let commercial building in England and Wales currently needs an EPC of E or better, and a refurbishment is the cheapest moment to improve the rating.

How the work is bought

Smaller jobs are usually priced as a lump sum against a specification under a minor works contract. Larger ones go either "traditional" (your designer completes the design, contractors price it) or "design and build" (the contractor develops the design and carries that risk). Public sector buyers often use frameworks. For a sense of scale, recent public awards include £1,581,300 to refurbish a single government office floor over about 25 weeks and £1,274,705 for office areas on a science campus over about 23 weeks.