How To Prepare For Your New Year Commercial Refurbishment Project

UCL
6 days ago
4 min read

Starting the new year off with a commercial refurbishment of your office?

Any successful project begins with the right preparation but this doesn’t just mean setting a budget and agreeing upon a project timeline. It also means:

Understanding your needs.
Identifying areas for improvement.
Including your team in the decision-making.
And finding the right partner.

Taking the time to do so now will deliver a refurbished workplace that ticks every box, whilst failing to prepare properly risks exceeding your budget and damaging your productivity, especially if you or the contractors are misaligned on the exact goals of the project.

Avoid this hassle, and set your business up for success in 2026 with our guide to planning, and preparing for, your upcoming commercial refurbishment project.

1. Consult With Your Team

Your team’s wants and needs should be at the front and centre of your commercial refurbishment project. Before you begin to workshop design plans with senior management, it is essential to talk to your employees about the upcoming changes in order to gather their input.

Don’t worry if the finer details of the project haven’t been decided on yet. These early consultations are invaluable, and you may find yourself integrating new features as suggested by them or rejecting design proposals that you were certain they would approve of. After all, it is your employees who will be working in the space each day and everything, from the approved layout down to the last fixture, must suit their requirements.

Set up a team meeting as soon as you can to engage all employees in an open discussion - or, if you are pushed for time, an anonymous online survey is also an effective way to understand their preferences, dislikes, and ideas. Click here for more advice on how to get the most out of these sessions.

2. Establish The Preferred Ways Of Working

Whilst you might be confined by an existing layout when moving into new premises, a key benefit of refurbishing an office from the ground up is being able to accommodate your team’s preferences at every stage.

This includes their favoured way of working, which may differ from one team member to the next, so make sure you ask your employees which of the following they would prefer:

An open plan layout.
Private offices and quiet zones.
Collaborative spaces and communal areas.
Partition walls that divide the space as needed.
Adaptable modular zones that can be reconfigured.

Remain open to their suggestions throughout the consultation process to design a workplace that truly reflects your company culture and way of working. It is also important to remember that the new layout must be able to accommodate all future growth within your company.

3. Identify Current Design Issues

Whether you’re relocating to a new building or conducting an office refurbishment at your current location, it’s important to assess what isn’t currently working; either for your team or for your business. Doing so will make sure that you don’t bring these workplace design issues with you into the future, so open the floor to your employees once more to voice what works, and what doesn’t, within the existing design.

This might be something as small and easily rectified as a light switch being too high, or that there are not enough power outlets to accommodate a team of this size. Or it might be a bigger issue, such as a raised ceiling creating a distracting echo, or a poorly positioned partition wall obstructing sunlight from entering the space. It also might be the case that you have already trialled an open plan layout and that it is not working for your employees, who now prefer the idea of contained quiet spaces for individual work.

Whether the issues are small-scale or widespread, identifying them before the project starts is essential in order to address each one in the approved design.

4. Prioritise Tech Integration

When designing an office that will serve your business for years to come, it’s important to consider both the current and future needs of your team. Right now, remote and hybrid models are as popular as in-person roles, and your new office will need to continue supporting these ways of working with the relevant technological integrations. Beyond this, any new workplace will also need to be prepared with cutting-edge fixtures to accommodate new advancements in the coming years.

In order to best prepare your new infrastructure setup, we recommend prioritising:

Consistent connectivity: High-speed internet with a reliable bandwidth to accommodate the needs of your entire team.
Sufficient power: Strategically placed power outlets that allow employees to work wherever they feel most comfortable and productive.
Collaborative conferencing: Cameras, microphones, sound systems and displays to contact remote and hybrid workers (as well as clients’) at a moment's notice.

Create an integrated workplace that will stand the test of time, and can be easily scaled up as required, by partnering with us today.

5. Contact The Professionals

Finally, it’s time to start your commercial refurbishment with the right partner for your project. You need a contractor that is sensitive to your ongoing operations, respectful of your space, and fully understanding of your current and future business needs… and here we are!

Even small office refurbishment projects involve several stages of planning, carrying out works, and completing final checks before the space is ready. There is plenty of onsite work involved in the delivery of a brand new office, but don’t worry about our services disrupting your team during the busy working day.

We offer our services around your operating hours to allow your employees to keep working without disruptions or distractions. Our flexible project schedules include evenings and weekends, and our full project management package takes care of everything on your behalf. We will also keep you informed of progress with regular updates on key milestones, so talk to us today about a project schedule that suits your team.