6 Tips On Ensuring Your Office Renovation Goes The Right Way

The most important step of renovating an office and any type of building is planning ahead of time. This minimizes any risk of things going wrong of your office renovation project. Be it small inconsistencies like badly drilled holes or larger problems like damage to the building structure or piping, knowing what you’re going to do ahead of time is critical if you plan on renovating your office.

In fact, even if you decide to outsource the work to another company instead of doing it yourself, you still need to plan ahead. This includes both what the renovation will include, how the building should look like, who and when does the renovation (i.e. has access to the building), and more.

That being said, let’s look at some of the specific things you need to plan ahead. Here’s a simple 6-point checklist of what you need to look out for.

1. A Plan Of What Has To Be Renovated

If you have a mockup or some sort of design file of exactly how you want your office to be arranged, it’s best to print it in several copies in advance. It’s easier to work with during the renovation process.

The reason you want to use paper instead of digital devices like phones and tablets is because they can easily get dirty or even damaged. When renovating so it’s best you keep the plans on a physical medium that is quick and easy to replace.

Also, because plans printed on paper can easily get lost or corrupted, it’s best to have more than one copies of them. Thinking about this ahead of time will ensure you don’t need to look for a printer last minute after you’ve already disassembled yours. That’s also the best case considering you’re probably going to have colleagues who need to refer to the plans as well. So having only one can simply slow all of you down. Click here to see some further readings on planning an office renovation.

2. An Extra Storage Place

During office renovation many things can get in the way. Therefore, you need to ensure you have a storage space where you’re going to place all items that are not needed during the renovation – which can potentially make the process harder for you.

This includes anything from small to big items. Now, while you can probably move small items around depending on which section of the office you’re working on, at a certain point this gets annoying. It is not practical if you’re renovating the whole office at the same time.

3. Ensuring Your Tools Are Up To Standard

Here, we’re not talking about some government-imposed regulations or a certain compliance. Rather, you need to focus on whether your tools are both suited for the job and if they are safe enough to use.

3.1. Proper Tools For Office Renovation

Firstly, ensure you have the right tools for what you’re trying to achieve. While you can “hack” your way around small fixes with improper tools. For bigger and more important tasks, you need to have the right machine. This includes having the right size tools as this can at the minimum create complications during your renovations and cost you time and money.

Additionally, for the left-handed renovators out there, it’s important for you to ensure you’re using tools that are suited for left-hand use.

3.2. Use Tools Made By A Trusted Brand

While it might be your first instinct to go for the cheapest tools possible, it’s probably better to take a step back and consider the situation. Normally, you want to see your tools as more of a long-term asset. For that reason, if you only plan on renovating this one thing – or for any other logical reason for that matter (for example, you happen to not have the space to properly store the tools), you can find places where you can borrow tools from.

However, when borrowing tools, consider the possibility that even after you’re done some small fixes might appear which require a specific tool. Allow yourself to borrow the tools for up to a week more once you’re done which is when you’ll usually see smaller problems start to appear (if, of course, there are any).

3.3. Use Only Properly Labeled Tools

Make sure the control panel for the tool is not dirty or damaged. This ensures you have the information available at hand when needed – and minimizes any potential risks. This ties right back to the previous point about using trusted brands for your tools. High-quality tooling manufacturers use trusted sources for their graphic overlays.

“Having properly labeled tooling requires the control panels to be very durable. For such clients, we usually add additional layers of coating to their panels. This makes the overlays last a lot longer, and makes them especially resistant to abrasion due to everyday usage.” Click here to see more.

It’s also important that the panels on your tools come with the correct instructions and guides on how to set up and use the tools. At the very least, this can save you some time and speed up the setup process.

4. Have Someone Help You Out With Your Office Renovation

Once again, this goes back to the planning stage. It’s easy to overestimate your own capabilities. But the reality is that often things are best done together. That’s why it’s best to get someone to help you. That could include anything from just moving heavier things together to actually splitting the work. So you can progressing faster while working simultaneously.

5. Make a Budget Ahead of Time

The average office renovation costs add up to about £150 GBP per square meter. So budgeting should go without saying – and is usually one of the first things you consider when considering a renovation. But by budgeting ahead of time you shouldn’t only look at plain material and services cost.

5.1. Hidden Costs

Depending on the size of the renovation, there might be some hidden costs that you haven’t considered. And, if you’re doing a large scale renovation, things such as an increase in your electricity or central heating bill can also add up and end up costing a significant amount over time.

5.2. Property Value After Office Renovation

As a side effect, renovating your office will potentially increase its real estate value. Therefore, thinking of your budget ahead of time can prove to justify a slightly bigger investment if it eventually increases the value of the property for when you decide to change offices later down the line.

6. Ensure Materials Are Available

Before you begin renovating, you need to make sure the new materials you want to purchase are actually available at the stores you’ve picked. The last thing you want is having to wait a week or two more in the middle of the office renovation.

This increase in construction lead time can not only be annoying – but also prevent you from doing business especially if you need to meet with clients at your location.

Alternatively, if you decide to order them online and get them delivered, it’s best you do that before you begin with the renovation. Because once the materials arrive you might find out that by accident something doesn’t match or is missing or that you’ve made a mistake in your planning or order. Therefore, allowing yourself to have a margin of a few days in between things is a great way to ensure everything flows at the right pace.

Conclusion Office Renovation

These were 6 planning tips for ensuring your office renovation process goes the right way. There are certainly many more things that can be added and unfortunately no list can be complete as what goes in a renovation is very dependent on your specific requirements. Whether you’re only doing a refresher or doing a major renewal of your offices, we hope that these tips come in handy.

Photo by Nastuh Abootalebi on Unsplash