Office Fitout Guide: Design, Build, Deliver
In this part three of our Office Fitout Guide, we share everything you need to know when reaching the final stages of improving your workspace. The guide describes best-practice for designing your new office, choosing your commercial furniture, setting your budget and timescales, and ensuring a smooth transition for employees.
How to design your new office :
You are now into the fun part of the process. This is where you can decide what your future office looks like – and most importantly how it works. Let the professionals do what they do best, but ensure you are still very much involved in the process and show interest in their design concepts. After all, it is your office refurbishment so you need to make sure it is designed with your business and team in mind.
It is vital that you give interior designers as much feedback as possible – your input over proposed office layouts, visuals, mood boards, colour palettes and finishes – is what will allow them to truly tap into your vision and requirements. Communication between you and your designers is crucial at all stages of the design process. Your office space should reflect your business purpose, communicate your brand and values, enhance your culture and support your people.
This is also the perfect opportunity to think about sustainability and how your office could be greener. Your fit-out partner should be able to work closely with you to find you the best sustainable products and materials for your workspace.
Choosing your furniture for your new office :
Good quality furniture, not just commercial furniture, enhances and complements our lifestyle. Like all our work surroundings, office furniture plays a significant role in improving employees’ productivity and overall satisfaction at work.
In addition to improved utility, office furniture has immense potential to make your workspace more functional, flexible and on-brand. It is equally important for businesses to have a visually pleasing workspace to reflect their story and purpose and one that actually works in supporting employee need – a quality of commercial furniture that is frequently overlooked. An unattractive and impractical surrounding can decrease employee motivation and happiness levels and impact your overall business performance.
If your commercial fit-out partner has a furniture entity in-house, then your journey just got that bit easier. They will be best placed to work closely with you to create a tailor-made working environment through considered furniture selection. The selection of commercial furniture goes beyond tables and chairs. Among other elements, commercial furniture includes tea point seating, breakout areas, meeting rooms and any agile working areas such as booths, high desks etc. This part of the process should be inclusive and collaborative with the designers to ensure furniture selections compliment both yours and their vision for the overall aesthetic of the space.
Your workplace budget and timescales:
Relocating / refurbishing your workspace is a significant investment for any business therefore it needs to be carefully thought about. After you shortlist your new commercial workspace requirements, you should set out a realistic budget and preferred timescales for the entire project and communicate these with involved parties. Your partners need to have full transparency on where you stand with this.
Commercial design and build is a modern procurement method where a single company will be appointed to take on the design and build of your project. In comparison to the traditional procurement approach, it has been widely recognised for being more cost-effective with a fixed quote for any proposed work prior to works starting, thereby giving you complete cost certainty over the project. There is also greater opportunity for value engineering as well as a faster delivery service with design and build. Therefore once you have decided on your budget and timescales, your design and build partner will take on the responsibility of carrying out the design, build and delivery of the office refurbishment – both on time and within budget.
Hiring a reputable commercial fit-out company will take away the guesswork that is often involved in office refurbishments and give you and your team complete peace of mind throughout the process.
Ensure a smooth transition for your employees:
You are almost at the finish line and ready to watch your business reap the benefits of a brand new, tailor-made office. This part of the process is all about the people that will work within the space. Remember that this (for most of your workforce) is the first time they will step foot in their new office. It is important to keep them as engaged as possible and maintain momentum so that it is a smooth and enjoyable transition. Your commercial fit-out partner will have everything in place and ready for the big reveal so that you can simply focus on getting everyone settled in and working in their new space.
To help with this stage of the process, you should set up induction meetings and training sessions with your fit-out partner to answer any questions or concerns. This can then be passed on to employees so that they can focus on doing their job to the best of their ability.
At Dthree, we work closely with clients to help keep employees engaged with their new space prior to the move. After all, it is all about the people and to get the best out of your new workspace, you need everyone on board and ready to go!
If you are looking to improve your workspace, have no idea where to start, and need some help – get in touch today! We would love to help and design your ideal office space.