Top three most common mistakes in office fitout

A failure to consider long term business plans. It is so common to see after 12-18 months into 5 year lease for a business to have reached capacity and wishing they had picked a bigger place or made sure their design had incorporated future growth. When companies initially have the foresight to take on extra space they tend to want to spread themselves out over that space and not permit their designer to allow for expansion. It is a lot easier to put 6 more workstations into an area that was either vacant or an informal meeting area, than it is to have to shuffle 16 workstations around to make room for them.

The next most common mistake seems to be the inability of some designers to take a holistic approach to office fitout and design during renovations. So many offices, a few years after the initial build look like a patch work quilt. After multiple changes done by countless designers and contractors some offices get themselves into a state where a total knock down and rebuild is all you can do to save them.

The final biggest mistake is intercompany communications, it’s not that the facility manager’s don’t try to talk to their people and ask for feedback, its more the fact that staff would rather say nothing during this process for fear of being wrong and then complain later when it doesn’t work for them. This is very counterproductive, but it is human nature, make sure your selected contractor knows how to put together a process that includes feedback from all departments and is able to incorporate their needs into the final design