Office Refurbishment Checklist

There are a multitude of reasons why you might decide to undertake an office fit out or refurbishment – from repurposing an existing space, to upgrading an outdated office layout, to simply refreshing the design and décor of your surroundings.

Whatever your motivation is, ticking all of the different boxes can quickly become a daunting task, as you find a way to balance expectations with office worker’s needs and preferences, and the all-important budget. To help keep your office refurbishment in check and within budget, here is our checklist of all the things to think about – and some of the main benefits of an office refurb.

The benefits of an office refurbishment

Every business uses its office space in different ways – meeting and greeting clients, nurturing creativity, and create a home for your businesses customer service. Here are just some of the benefits of a refurbishment.

Strengthen your brand presence and identity

There are a number of ways that you can strengthen your brand’s identity in your office space, with branding colours used in decorating and your company vision or mission used as part of the design in communal areas. This isn’t just important for workers and employees themselves but will also help when visitors come to your office – leaving them with a lasting sense of who you are and what your brand is all about.

Make better use of space

We don’t just mean with regards to desk layout – optimising your use of office space also means considering where to place breakout spaces and how to support the navigation of your office space for regular users and visitors.

Believe it or not, the way you use your space is also important when it comes to supporting collaborative and quiet work – creating separate workstations for those who are working in a group, working in pairs, and who need to work alone at different times.

Boost productivity and collaboration

This runs on nicely from the last point, with many office refurbishments making moves towards the creation of new workspaces for different styles of work. We tend to find that modern offices, particularly in very creative industries, like to establish set areas for different working groups which nurture all the different work styles.

As well as setting up collaborative and private work areas, this can be highlighted in the way you decorate and accessorise the space – for example adding blinds to support private work, installing whiteboards for jotting down ideas, and considering the movement of colleagues throughout the office.

The checklist: Things to consider when refurbishing an office

There are four key things you need to take into consideration when refurbishing your office – and all four of them are areas that need to be ironed out before work can even begin.

1. What do you want to achieve?

This is the part where your creativity can run a little wild (before the budget pulls you back in). As an initial stage of your office refurbishment, you need to identify what it is you want to achieve and how you hope to use the refurbishment to establish a better workplace for your employees.

Using all of the benefits above, draw up a list of areas you want to improve and how they will positively impact your business. This will help when it comes to point three – establishing your timeline.

2. What’s your budget?

Time for the big question – how much is the project going to cost? The chances are that you will need to establish a budget before entering into conversations about the details of your office refurbishment – however don’t be surprised if this fluctuates a little depending on materials, timelines, and your ideal finish.

Our recommendation? Assign a budget to each area of the project, including design, construction, and decoration, so that you know how much you are willing to spend on each stage of the overall refurbishment.

3. What’s your timeline and priority list?

Using your list from point one, establishing your priorities and timeline will help to keep the project on time and constantly working towards your end goal. The outline of this will depend greatly on how much of your office you want to change in terms of structure and how much of it is simply aesthetic, so make sure that you agree on a concrete plan with your construction team before work commences.

4. Is this an in-house or outsourced job?

Finally, to the refurbishment itself – and unless you are experts in this field yourself and able to take on the complexities associated with this type of project, we recommend bringing in a third party interior design team like ours, with specialist knowledge of office spaces and how best to optimise the space available.

For more information on how we can help you achieve the office space of your dreams, get in touch today.