Fitout and refurbishment.

Nearly everything that goes wrong on a commercial fitout traces to one of two documents nobody read carefully at the start: the lease, and the base building services capacity. The lease governs approvals, hours, insurances, and the make-good you are creating today. The base building governs whether the air conditioning can actually serve the density you have designed, whether there is spare electrical capacity in the riser, and whether the sprinkler layout suits the ceiling you want.

We read both before we price. It is not a value-add; it is the only way the price means anything.

Does the base building air conditioning have capacity for your density?

A floor designed for one person per fifteen square metres does not automatically serve one per eight. Supplementary cooling to meeting rooms, comms rooms and high-density zones is common, and it needs somewhere to reject heat, which is a landlord conversation, not a tenancy one.

Is there electrical capacity in the riser, and is it yours?

Spare capacity on a floor is not the same as capacity allocated to your tenancy. This is a written answer from the building manager, not an assumption from the switchboard schedule.

What does the fire and smoke system require if we change the ceiling?

Moving a ceiling changes sprinkler coverage and detection layout, and modifying a base building fire system is a certified change with its own approvals.

What are the access, hours and loading rules?

Lift bookings, dock windows, noisy-works hours and after-hours access govern how the programme is built. A tower with one goods lift and a two-hour daily window is a different project from a low-rise with a loading bay.

What is the make-good obligation you are creating?

Today’s fitout is tomorrow’s make-good. We record what is being installed over what, and photograph the condition before we start, because that record is worth real money at the end of the lease.

A tenancy on level twenty-three is not a ground-floor tenancy with a longer trip. Every services load moves with the occupant number, and the building the loads draw on is shared with everybody else in it. More people on the floor means more cooling, more outside air, more sanitary provision, more electrical load and a different egress calculation, all at once.

Then the material has to arrive. A goods lift has a door size, a car size and a booking sheet, and anything that will not fit needs a hoist or a crane and a road occupancy approval to go with it. We work out how the largest single item gets to the floor before we price the floor, because on a tower that answer sometimes changes the design.

• Separation that actually separatesAcoustic hoarding, negative-pressure dust containment where required, and a boundary that building occupants can see and understand.
• Noisy works scheduled with the building, not against itCore drilling, demolition and fixing are booked into agreed windows and communicated to neighbouring tenancies in advance. Surprise noise is how a refurbishment becomes a building-wide complaint.
• Air quality and shared systemsDust in a return air path reaches tenancies that have nothing to do with your project. Filtration and isolation of the affected zones are planned, not improvised.
• One route in, one route outMaterial movement mapped through the building with protection to lift cars, lobbies and floor coverings. Damage to common areas is the fastest way to lose a landlord.
• Live services never assumed deadIsolation permits, tagged and tested, with a nominated person on both sides. In an occupied building an unplanned isolation reaches people who did not agree to any of this.
• Progressive handover where it helpsStaging a floor so occupation can begin in part of it is often cheaper for the client than a single completion. We price it as an option rather than assuming either way.