Commercial Office Fit Outs: What To Consider?

Fitting out your brand-new office space or completing an office redesign can often be a challenging task. Let us help you with some insightful tips.

A commercial interior fit out can be one of the biggest expenses your business has to pay for, so getting it right the first time is crucial.

There are a number of factors to consider before you even start looking at colours for the walls and brand-new furniture. We’ve compiled our top things to consider, helping make the process a little less overwhelming.

Size of space

You may think you only need 50 desks at the moment, but what about your company’s future growth? Take a look at your long-term plan. Will you be recruiting in the next 2, 3, 4 or 5 years? If the facilities you’ve moved from weren’t big enough, then consider the size of your new space and ensure you add enough working areas for existing and future employees.

If you’re not moving buildings but need to utilise your current space better, an office redesign could be just what you need - you could even introduce a mezzanine to double your floor space.

Have a look at the current layout of the furniture – is it the best use of space? If you’re expanding but need to remain where you are, consider investing in more streamlined desks or more creative open plan areas for people to work that utilises the space better.

Functionality

From your meeting rooms and break out spaces to your eating areas and employee relaxing zones, consider all of the different functionalities your new office needs to provide. Spend some time researching other commercial office interiors. It may be difficult to overlook all of the quirky feature’s which offices like Google and Apple boast, but are they realistic for the space you have?

Instead of waiting until your fit-out is complete, while you’re in the throws of your office redesign, consider installing innovative features such as cloud technology. By moving from clunky in-office hardware to the cloud, you’ll allow more room for free space as there will be less equipment to house.

Timescales

If you’re moving to a new office space you may not have transitioned your employees across just yet; however, if you’re redesigning your existing offices, you’ll want as little disruption to your regular business hours as possible. Consider the timeline of events as each milestone of your office refurbishment is happening. If you’re changing key elements such as the internet and phone systems, plan this outside of normal office hours.

Should you be migrating any internal business technology, move everything to the cloud (even if you’re not staying in the cloud) so your teams can remain connected. Ultimately your clients should still be able to contact you via phone or email at all times during the refurb.

Budget

Having a budget is an integral part of a commercial office fit out. If a strict budget is not put in place at the beginning, it can often run away with the project as finishing touches and other impressive features are added. The above points should help you towards working out what your overall budget will be, but ensure key stakeholders are a part of this process.

A stressful time made easy

Don’t let the stresses and headaches of an office redesign and fit out overwhelm you. By enlisting the help of a commercial interior specialist, you can ensure the process runs as quickly and as smoothly as possible.