Commercial Refurbishments
Offices, retail units and commercial premises refurbished by one team under a JCT contract, designed, approved and built to a programme that works around your trading hours and hands back a space you can occupy.
Free consultation and site visit. JCT contract with valuation-based payments and a 12-month defects period.
The Service
Commercial refurbishment covers strip-out, reconfiguration, structural alterations, services renewal, partitioning, finishes and fit-out. We handle the design, the approvals and the build, with one point of contact throughout.
It suits landlords preparing units for letting, businesses reconfiguring premises they occupy, retailers refitting a store, and property owners upgrading a building's condition, compliance or energy performance.
The right time is when the space is costing you: voids between tenants, a layout that no longer fits headcount, or a fit-out that undersells the business to everyone who walks in.
Professional help matters because commercial work carries obligations that domestic work does not: fire strategy, accessibility, means of escape, landlord licence to alter and, frequently, a hard handover date attached to a lease or a trading calendar.
Refurbishment and fit-out for landlords, developers, property owners and occupying businesses.
Our ARB registered architect produces layouts, planning applications and building regulations packages where the work requires them.
Phasing, out-of-hours coordination and sequencing agreed before we start so the business keeps running.
JCT contract, valuation-based payments, £10m employers' liability and £1m professional indemnity on the design work.
What It Costs To Get Wrong
On a commercial job, the cost of a slipped programme is usually larger than the cost of the work itself. These are the things that cause it.
Fire strategy, escape routes and accessibility get tested at sign-off. Finding a problem then means reopening finished work with a handover date approaching.
Alterations to a leased property usually require licence to alter. Starting without it risks dilapidations claims and enforced reinstatement.
A designer and a contractor with separate contracts means every unresolved detail becomes a dispute while the programme stands still.
An empty unit costs rent every week. A programme without a contract behind it has nothing holding it to a date.
More desks, more equipment or a commercial kitchen change the electrical, ventilation and drainage demand. That is a design calculation, not an assumption.
Our Process
We visit the premises, review condition, services and constraints, and establish the trading, lease and handover requirements that shape the programme.
Our ARB registered architect produces layouts and specification, coordinating fire strategy, accessibility and services with the intended use.
Planning where change of use or external work is involved, building regulations, structural calculations, and support with landlord licence to alter.
Strip-out, structural work, partitioning, mechanical and electrical, finishes and fit-out, run by our own staff under a JCT contract.
Building control sign-off, commissioning and certification, handover documentation and a 12-month defects period as standard.
What You Get
Design and construction under the same roof, so a detail query is resolved internally rather than becoming a delay.
Phasing and sequencing planned around trading hours, lease events and handover dates rather than around trade availability.
Fire strategy, escape, accessibility and building regulations addressed at design stage, so sign-off is not a gamble.
Valuation-based staged payments assessed against completed work, giving a visible relationship between spend and progress.
£5m public liability, £10m employers' liability and £1m professional indemnity covering the design.
A 12-month defects period as standard, so issues emerging in the first year of occupation get put right.
In Detail
Commercial refurbishment shares its trades with residential work but almost none of its constraints. The differences sit in compliance, services and programme.
Scope is set by the use, the condition of the premises and whatever the lease requires.
Commercial premises are governed by fire safety obligations, means of escape, compartmentation, accessibility requirements and building regulations that are enforced more visibly than in a house.
Where the use of the building changes, planning permission for change of use may be required alongside building regulations. We identify that at the outset rather than mid-programme.
Increasing occupancy or adding equipment changes electrical load, ventilation rates and drainage demand. Existing incoming supplies are not always adequate, and confirming that early avoids a stalled fit-out.
Data infrastructure, lighting design, air conditioning and metering are coordinated with the layout so containment and routes are built in rather than surface-mounted afterwards.
Most alterations to leased premises need landlord consent through a licence to alter, which sets out what may be changed and what must be reinstated at lease end.
We work with landlords and property owners directly as well as with occupying tenants, and can help ensure the works are documented in a way that supports the dilapidations position later.
Where the premises stay in use, work is phased into zones with temporary protection, dust and noise control and clear separation between the site and the operating business.
Our standard hours are Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm, and where a programme genuinely requires work outside that window it is planned into the contract rather than improvised.
Residential refurbishment is judged on finish and disruption. Commercial refurbishment is judged on compliance, programme certainty and whether the space performs for the business occupying it.
Because we run both, the discipline required on commercial projects, proper drawings, sequenced programme, valued payments, carries directly into the residential work as well.
Customer-facing premises carry requirements that offices do not: shopfronts and signage that may need consent, durable finishes specified for heavy footfall, lighting designed to present product properly, and accessible entry from the street.
Where food or drink is served, extraction, grease management, drainage and hygiene-rated finishes are designed in from the start, along with the separation between customer areas and back of house.
Programme matters more here than anywhere else, because every closed week is measurable lost trade. Phasing that keeps part of the premises open is usually worth the additional complexity, and we plan it into the contract rather than attempting it on the fly.
Opening up floorplates, removing internal walls, forming new entrances or altering staircases all require structural design, and in a commercial building the loading assumptions are rarely documented in a way you can rely on. We survey and instruct our partner structural engineer rather than working from the drawings a previous occupier left behind.
Roof condition, external fabric, window replacement and thermal upgrades are often bundled into a refurbishment because access and scaffolding are already in place. Doing them together is materially cheaper than returning for each separately, and it means the building's condition is dealt with once.
Common Questions
Related Services
Directly employed building staff and long-standing subcontract teams, running under a JCT contract with valuation-based staged payments.
Construction in Surrey & LondonWhole-house renovations, basements and period property work, including listed schemes such as our recent Grade II project in Notting Hill.
Residential Refurbishments in Surrey & LondonARB-registered, in-house architecture from first sketch to Stage 4 technical drawings: available on its own or as part of a full build.
Architecture in Surrey & LondonFull planning applications, building regulations packages and technical drawings; the standalone service that makes up around 75% of our work.
Planning & Architectural Drawings in Surrey & London
A free consultation and survey, one contract covering design and build, valuation-based payments and a 12-month defects period.
