Office Fit Out Management
Managing your office fit out is a huge job. Given that you've likely got other day-to-day responsibilities beyond this project, it can get very time-consuming. Two in three office fit out projects also run over time by more than 10%. If you're worried about how much time your upcoming office fit out is going to take, that's more than fair enough.
However, you're not powerless. There are actions you can take to make running your project more efficient. As a result, you'll save yourself a lot of time and stress.
In this article, we'll go through 10 actionable ways you can make your fit out less time-consuming, including tips on how to apply them to your own office fit out. By the end, you'll know how to run your fit out as efficiently as possible, leading to minimum stress and disruption for you.
1) Plan Early and Thoroughly
The most important thing you can do to reduce the amount of time your fit out consumes is to create a thorough project plan. Early planning helps anticipate potential issues, giving you time to mitigate these risks leading to a smoother project.
To create an effective office fit out plan, start by reviewing your current workspace strategy - or creating one. Take the time to define the motivations for your fit out. It's also necessary to build alignment with your company leadership and key stakeholders.
2) Set Clear Goals & Objectives
Once your initial planning is complete, your next step should be to define initial goals for the project. The key ones are budgets, timelines, and success criteria. This will ensure all your key stakeholders are aligned and focused on what matters most. These can be refined as your project goes on, but it's crucial to have these goals before you reach out to office fit out companies.
To set the right goals for your project, discuss available budget and necessary deadlines with your executive team. You should also consider your workspace strategy and ROI. Once this is done, you can define and document your goals. By keeping focussed on these throughout the project, you can avoid time-wasting distractions. To learn more, read How to Create an Office Fit Out Brief.
3) Choose the Right Design & Build Partner
One of the most important parts of your fit out is choosing your design and build partner. It's a decision that can make or break your project. An incompetent company will be very time-consuming to manage, regardless of how good the design or how low the cost.
When choosing your fit out company, project management expertise is as important as design and costing. To ensure you're choosing a competent fit out partner, ask them about how they minimise your time requirements during the project, and speak to their previous clients to get a better idea of how this works. For more help choosing the right fit out company for you, read this article.
4) Delegate Workload
Even when planned properly, running an office fit out is a huge amount of work. You can't do it alone. You need to delegate some of the work to other members of your team. This ensures that you're not the bottleneck of the project. It also makes the proejct a lot less stressful and time-consuming for you.
To delegate effectively, create a master task list or work breakdown structure. Ensure every task has someone accountable for it and a due date. You'll still need to manage these people and follow them up to ensure completion, but it makes the project much smoother.
5) Maintain Communication
Failure to communicate is the driver behind many of the other time-consuming issues that make your project so disruptive. It's important that you communicate well with all your stakeholders. This will create alignment, maintain relationships, prevent misunderstandings, and help keep the project on track.
To maintain effective communication in your project, create a clear plan so that everyone know what information will be communicated via which channels at what time. Regular site reports, inspections, and meetings should all be part of this plan.
6) Create a Contingency Plan
Ultimately, construction projects are inherently risky. There are many different stakeholders, global supply chains, and many factors that outside of your control that will affect your project. To ensure these don't become too time-consuming, you need to allow contingencies within your plans.
First, identify potential risks to your project. You can then make a plan to mitigate those risks. You should also allow a contingency for both cost and time, which will give you a margin of error during the project.
7) Utilise Technology
Effective use of technology can make your project a lot less time-consuming by making communication and collaboration a lot easier. Project and task management software can also make it easier to keep other people accountable.
Make sure you have good task management software for your own internal team to track tasks. Your design & build partner should also have a good project management technology stack to manage your project, and you should verify this before appointing them.
8) Pre-Start Preparation
Another way you should make your project less time-consuming is to ensure that your package is completely finalised before you sign the works contract. If you allow works to start before the contract is signed, your negotiating position is weakened. This will make managing your fit out company very stressful and time-consuming.
To avoid this, make sure you have a complete project quotation, drawing pack, specification pack, and programme before you sign the contract. All these documents should also align with each other. Such preparation will require more work initially but will save a lot of time in the long run.
9) Proactively Monitor Progress
Once your office fit out has begun, you can't afford to just sit back and wait for problems to happen. You need to proactively identify and mitigate risks before they become problems. Otherwise, you will be very reactive and have less control over your project.
To apply this to your project, you need a good reporting structure in place, consisting of weekly site reports, regular visits, and easy access to key staff at your fit out company. This proactive approach will save a lot of time by ensuring that most problems never happen.
10) Evaluate and Learn Post-Completion
Once your project is complete, the final step is to assess the success of your project and gather feedback. This will help you save time on future projects by reviewing how you could have reduced the disruption and time-consuming parts of your project.
To do this, get feedback from several different colleagues, as well as reviewing what you spent the most time on and what you found the most stressful. You can then distil this into 5-10 key actions for your next fit out project.
Making Your Fit Out Less Time-Consuming
Ultimately, effective planning and communication are the most important ways to make your project less time-consuming. Without the effort up front to get these structures in place, your project will become a lot more stressful and time-consuming.
Choosing the right design & build partner is also crucial. Choosing the right office fit out company doesn’t guarantee a disruption-free proejct, but choosing the wrong one will guarantee a very time-consuming one due to the increased management they will require. Delegation is also crucial to spread the workload and utilise different skillsets.
By following the steps we've gone through today, you'll be able to run your fit out as efficiently as possible, leading to minimum stress and disruption for you, and an enjoyable project that is much less time-consuming.
To take the next step, download your copy of the Ultimate Office Relocation Guide. There, you'll learn even more about what is required to run an efficient and effective project, including explanations and breakdowns of key terms as well as a comprehensive checklist to make sure you haven't missed anything. Download your relocation guide here.
To learn more about preparing for a successful fit out, read How to Create an Office Fit Out Brief.
