HOW TO CHOOSE THE RIGHT BUILDING FOR YOUR COMPANY

There's an art to choosing the right building and unfortunately, a lot of businesses get it wrong. The problem usually starts right at the beginning of the process, with poorly defined building selection criteria.

Prior to the pandemic, businesses tended to base their property search on a rough estimate of the size of space they require by using the size of their existing office as a guide. While this is a logical approach, the problem is that it doesn’t take into account that buildings have very different characteristics and limitations.

One of the secrets is to understand what determines the number of people you can fit into a building. These are called the "limiting factors to occupation" which include things like the provision of toilets, volume of fresh air, level of mains power coming into the building, emergency escape routes, widths of stairwells - many of which are governed by building control regulations.

Another secret to getting it right is to understand the difference between net. lettable space and net usable space.

The first is the area on which you pay rent and therefore includes circulation space.

The second is the amount of space you actually operate in.

In an efficient building the ratio between usable and lettable space should be 80%

plus. This reduces to around 60% in an inefficient building.

It is wise, therefore, to create a checklist of things to consider before you make the decision to move office.

Another key element is to conduct a workplace audit to calculate your optimum net usable space. Armed with this and the appreciation of the limiting factors to the occupation you will be in a far stronger position to select the right building.

Consequently, rather than looking for a 11,000 SQFT office, you may end up looking for 8,000 SQFT of usable office space instead, which depending on the individual characteristics of the building, on a typical 10 year lease the difference is quite literally hundreds of thousands if not millions in rent savings.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

· Calculate your net usable space

· Produce a detailed building selection criteria

· Appreciate the difference between buildings

· Evaluate the limiting factors to occupation

· Instruct your agent with a clearly defined brief

· Carry out detailed surveys