OfficeDesign & Development

Every office project that goes wrong goes wrong at the same point: a floor was leased or a layout was drawn before anyone modelled how many people would actually sit in it, how often, and in what pattern. We begin with an occupancy model — current headcount, three-year growth, average attendance across the week, and the split between focus work, collaboration and client-facing time. That model determines the desking ratio, the number and size of meeting rooms, and how much of the floor plate is given to open space versus enclosed space.

In practice, a Greek or Southeast European office running a three-day hybrid pattern rarely needs one desk per employee. A ratio of 0.6 to 0.8 desks per head, paired with more small meeting rooms and phone booths, usually delivers a better working floor than a fully allocated desk plan — and frees enough square metres to justify the quality of finishes elsewhere. Getting that ratio right at week one is worth more than any material decision made later.

Fix the occupancy model first. Everything downstream — cost, layout, furniture volume, M&E load — is derived from it.

Commercial leases in modern buildings usually hand you a Category A shell: raised access floor, suspended or exposed ceiling, base-build HVAC, sprinklers, lighting grid and a finished core. Category B is everything that makes it yours — partitioning, meeting rooms, joinery, kitchens, branded reception, feature lighting, data cabling, acoustic treatment and furniture.

The commercial risk sits in the seam between the two. Base-build sprinkler heads, air diffusers and lighting grids were laid out for an empty floor; the moment you add rooms, those services need moving, and that work needs landlord approval. We survey the base-build services before the layout is finalised, so the room grid is drawn to work with the existing services wherever possible, and any relocation is priced, drawn and submitted for approval as part of the package rather than discovered on site.

Nobody walks into an office and comments on the partition specification. They notice whether they can concentrate, whether the light is comfortable at 3pm, and whether the air feels stale by mid-afternoon. Those three variables carry almost all of the perceived quality of a workplace, and all three are decided by drawings, not decoration.

Acoustic performance comes from a stack of decisions: partition build-up and whether it runs to the slab or stops at the ceiling, ceiling absorption class, soft flooring in circulation, and enough enclosed booths that calls do not happen at desks. Lighting is a mix of controlled ambient levels for screen work, task light where people write, and warm accent light in social zones so the space changes character across the day. Air is a mechanical question — the base-build system was sized for a nominal occupancy, and a dense fit-out with more enclosed rooms usually needs supplementary units and rebalanced diffusers.

We specify all three at design stage and model them in 3D alongside the finishes, so the client approves a working environment rather than a set of pretty images.

Concentration, comfortable light and fresh air decide whether staff like the office. All three are drawing decisions, not decoration.

Residential-grade finishes fail quickly in an office. Circulation routes take thousands of passes a week, chair castors destroy soft flooring, and cleaning regimes are chemical and daily. We specify to commercial classifications: contract-rated carpet tile or LVT with the appropriate wear class in circulation, porcelain or engineered stone at reception and kitchen worktops, laminate and veneer boards with impact-resistant edging in joinery, and washable, scrubbable paint systems in high-traffic corridors.

Because we import and distribute the materials ourselves, the specification is not aspirational — every finish named in the drawing has a real lead time, a real price and a stock position on the day of pricing. That is the difference between a design pack and a deliverable one: our specification is drawn against materials we can actually put on a truck.

Office fit-out cost is driven by four things, in order: the density of enclosed rooms, the amount of bespoke joinery, the M&E scope, and the furniture grade. Two floors of identical size can differ by a factor of two purely on the number of glazed meeting rooms and the reception joinery. We price each of those lines separately so you can see the trade-offs and move money between them, rather than receiving a single lump figure with no levers.

Programme is driven by lead times, not labour. Partitioning and ceilings move quickly; glazed systems, bespoke joinery and imported furniture do not. A typical mid-size Category B fit-out runs eight to sixteen weeks on site, but the long-lead items must be ordered at the point of design sign-off, which is why we insist on a signed 3D specification before procurement starts. Once that file is approved it becomes the costing, the order list and the installation sequence — one source of truth for every stream.

Enclosed rooms, bespoke joinery, M&E scope and furniture grade. Move money between those four lines and the number moves with you.

A fit-out is not finished when the furniture arrives. Commissioning, testing, cleaning and snagging are a defined phase with a signed record per floor, covering mechanical balance, lighting scenes, data and AV, door hardware, and every finish defect logged and closed. You receive as-built drawings, warranties, product data sheets and cleaning and maintenance guidance for every specified finish.

We stay on the project through the first occupied weeks, because that is when the real defects appear: a meeting room that runs hot, an acoustic path nobody predicted, a desk cluster that needs re-plugging. Fixing those within the first ninety days is part of the delivery, not a separate call-out.