Frequently Asked Questions
We’ve been designing workplaces since 1989. Here are some of the most frequently asked questions…
Office Refurbishment
Yes, we have a long history and a proven track record in office construction management and refurbishments, having undertaken over 2,000 projects since 1989. During this time, we have never delivered a project late or over budget and have never had a health and safety incident, nor a dispute with a client.
50% of our instructions are for refurbishment projects in occupied offices. It takes a different skill set to be able to manage a project with sensitivity whilst the company remains in situ. We seamlessly coordinate your project plans, communicating with your staff with zonal drawings, so they are clear when we are arriving in their area to undertake work. The area of construction is always barriered from the working office, so your staff remain safe. With client approval, we communicate the project plans with the building management and other tenants who are adjacent to your floors. The projects are managed with great sensitivity, looking to mitigate noise, dust and disruption. Our aim is to allow your business to continue operating in safety, comfort and with minimum disruption to the workflow.
Every project is overseen by a dedicated Cityspace site manager, and we work with a long-established, trusted supply chain of trade contractors who have partnered with us for over 15 years. This consistency, combined with our structured approach to design, build and delivery, ensures the product delivered is of the highest quality.
We are ISO 9001 accredited for quality management. We audit our supply chain, with all new suppliers going through a rigorous evaluation of services, goods and their approach to your project. No new suppliers are added until we have seen and referenced their work. We continually monitor our supply chain and seek your feedback on the project completed and how trades perform in aftercare.
In the past 37 years we have never had a health and safety incident on one of our sites. We have a very detailed health and safety policy, which is available on request.
Yes, whether you are moving or undertaking an office refurbishment, we can take care of the whole process.
We can manage all planning permissions and building regulations as a matter of course, including for listed buildings, and provide a full scope of work and working drawings. We manage the process of “licences to alter” with your landlord and also deal with your landlord’s lawyers to gain all the necessary approvals.
We use third-party building regulation inspectors for independent review and verification.
Absolutely, Cityspace has extensive experience in complex buildings; we have constructed data centres, clean rooms, distribution hubs, manufacturing facilities, trading floors, BREEAM-rated and historic buildings up to Grade I* listed.
50% of our instructions are for refurbishment projects in occupied offices. It takes a different skill set to be able to manage a project with sensitivity whilst the company remains in situ. We seamlessly coordinate your project plans, communicating with your staff with zonal drawings, so they are clear when we are arriving in their area to undertake work. The area of construction is always barriered from the working office, so your staff remain safe. With client approval, we communicate the project plans with the building management and other tenants who are adjacent to your floors. The projects are managed with great sensitivity, looking to mitigate noise, dust and disruption. Our aim is to allow your business to continue operating in safety, comfort and with minimum disruption to the workflow.
Our track record of delivery is second to none – in the past 37 years, we have delivered every project on time and on budget. Our success at meeting deadlines is down to our thorough planning of procurement, supply chain and construction works, and the knowledge and experience of the Cityspace team and our longstanding contractors.
Over the years, we have developed our own contracts which are specific to office design and build, but we are also happy to work with any form of JCT contract, subject to lawyers’ amendments.
As an ISO 14001-accredited design and construction company, we assess the environmental impact of all materials and products we specify and use on our projects. Our processes are designed to minimise waste and reduce environmental impact across every stage of specification and delivery of our projects. Currently, over 99% of our site waste is recycled, with less than 1% sent to landfill.
Cityspace provides comprehensive and transparent cost proposals for each project. Costs are broken down by trade and presented in unitised rates or quantities. The costs illustrate the minimum price to deliver your design brief. If design options are suggested these are priced to allow informed choices to be made by you, the board, the management team or steering group.
Once your project commences any requested changes to the project costs are updated weekly.
Yes, we can. Our experience means we have confidence in our calculations, and so we can offer you a guaranteed maximum price. Very few interior design and office fit out providers offer this, but we know that some clients want to avoid any surprises and have the comfort of knowing a maximum cost prior to engagement.
Office Relocation
Absolutely, we can help you decide whether to stay where you are or to move to new premises. We can review your current office space and make recommendations on how to utilise this better, including considerations of space, workstyle and infrastructure. We can also help you identify and assess new locations, including helping you fulfil your current lease obligations to ensure a smooth exit.
We are well connected with property surveyors in all key locations and market areas. We can help provide searches showing properties available for let or sale. In addition to this, we are able to identify off market opportunities where the client is moving but has not yet informed their landlord or agent.
We can give you all the assistance you need to manage the exit from your current office in the smoothest and most cost-effective manner.
Dilapidations are part of our surveyors’ job, working out the most economical way to meet your lease obligations and get sign-off from your landlord. It’s a combination of design and surveying, looking at the legalities of the office lease and the covenants therein and, from the designer’s point of view, deciding what materials to use to satisfy the obligations.
We find that most clients’ attention gets focused on planning the move to their new office, and we therefore can help them at every step of the process, from assessing dilapidations work to be done, completing the works, and getting sign off from the landlord. To do this, we can work collaboratively with both property agents and your own lawyers.
Please contact us for a bespoke overview of properties available.
Yes, we have great experience of relocating companies, merging cultures and opening new offices.
We start with a master plan, bespoke to each client, which details all locations, the number of staff and the relocation plans, and work this through systematically to ensure that your complex programme is delivered on time and on budget.
The guide price per square foot is very wide as it depends on multiple factors, such as the finish required, how cellular the space is, the technology deployed and complexity of the building we are adapting. For an accurate estimate, we recommend getting in touch with us with the brief you have so that we can provide clearer information.
We have access to a number of accountancy professionals who can help you with calculating project capital allowances. We recommend you get into contact with us for further advice.
We manage relocations through our move management service, whereby we handle everything from planning through to logistics and the final move-in. With advanced planning, our team will time the project works and the move to avoid lease exposure on your current premises.
Through our move management service, we handle everything from planning through to logistics and the final move-in. The findings from our workplace consultation with you are used to understand space planning and where teams should be strategically located in the new office. We manage everything from removing your existing belongings, to storage, through to placing them in the new office.
Your premises and the location of it can have a huge impact on your business. The office location plays a big role in brand perception and can influence the way potential employees view your business, as well as clients. If your office is easy to get to and well situated in London, you may find the right talent are keen to work for your business. Similarly, you create a lasting impression on clients who may associate your industry with certain postcodes in London. For example, a tech company based in Shoreditch may give clients a better impression, due to its locality amongst other well-known tech companies. Similarly, a barristers’ chambers may benefit from being located in Holborn or Chancery Lane.
Relocating your business can have a significant (yet often subconscious) impact on the way the world perceives your brand, leaving a lasting impact.
Relocating an office is very complex and requires attention to detail and thorough logistical planning. When planned in good time and by an experienced team, the risks are minimal. However, if the right procedures are not followed, you could be at risk of a poorly timed move, which can lead to lease exposures, dilapidation costs or the new office not being ready for move-in. This can lead to significantly more costs in damage control and interim measures, as well as business disruption.
When following Cityspace’s protocol, all projects are completed to time and to budget, ensuring minimal disruption and no risk, with our track record of 100% of all projects being delivered to time and budget.
Hybrid Working
No one single working style will suit all organisations. Hybrid working and productivity largely depend on the organisation, experience of the staff, nature of work and office space technology. The key lies in the ability of staff to communicate effectively, both internally and externally, both amongst each other and with clients.
The design of an excellent hybrid working space is dependent on firstly understanding how different groups work together and then enabling efficiency. This can look like designated quiet spaces as well as creative spaces designed for collaboration, or the right technology that allows for collaboration regardless of location. The most effective hybrid companies utilise the right balance of design and technology to remove barriers to achieving business goals.
More topics
Building Appraisal
Yes, we can. Cityspace provides extensive support to clients in the early stages of selecting a new building.
Our Evaluation Report helps you gauge the suitability of a potential building for your occupational needs via a full building appraisal and feasibility plan. In this report, we ensure that the space suits your company’s organisational structure and working style, has flexibility for the future, and allows for any envisaged expansion. Most importantly, we also produce an unbiased cost analysis of the financial aspects of the building, in order to gauge the long-term costs associated with any particular building under consideration. This means you can have confidence at the outset that a building is the right fit for your organisation and that there are no unpleasant (and costly) surprises down the track.
We can provide this as well. For speculative buildings, we can visit the space, normally within 48 hours of a request, and then provide an email summary of our observations.
For these initial assessments, we look at how the office space will fit your brief, whether there are any potential layout difficulties, and carry out a visual inspection of the condition of the building infrastructure, compliance with building regulations and health and safety legislation, and a review of the fit and finish of common areas.
As a result of this initial visual inspection, you will have some clear information to help you decide if the building is worthy of being shortlisted.
In the unusual event that your ideal building has technical issues associated with the infrastructure, we can carry out a full pre-commissioning survey. This report includes details of the operation of the air conditioning and air flow rates, water tests to indicate the internal condition of the plant and pipework, and electrical condition surveys.
With this detailed information, you can then be clear on your options, to either negotiate better terms on the office lease, or ask for a capped service charge, or indeed walk away from the building due to the economics involved.
In the unusual event that your ideal building has technical issues associated with the infrastructure, we can carry out a full pre-commissioning survey. This report includes details of the operation of the air conditioning and air flow rates, water tests to indicate the internal condition of the plant and pipework, and electrical condition surveys.
With this detailed information, you can then be clear on your options, to either negotiate better terms on the office lease, or ask for a capped service charge, or indeed walk away from the building due to the economics involved.
Office design
Yes. More of our clients have been looking to increase the flexibility of their workplace through hybrid working, and Cityspace is an expert in this field.
We can help you by reviewing how your workspaces are currently designed, exploring changes in line with your work culture and practices, and suggesting ways to improve your workspace to increase efficiency and staff wellbeing. Often, simple changes can make a big difference, like simply ensuring your staff have everything they need for their role at their fingertips, determining the right configuration of formal and informal meeting spaces, and that people can log in from wherever they are working in the office.
To find out more on how agile working could work for you, please contact the Cityspace team.
There are three primary restrictions on hybrid working. The first is technology, and whether there is enough flexibility in IT infrastructure for staff to log in from every desk. The second is culture, and whether a more flexible workstyle will be accepted by staff. The third is regulatory, such as statutory regulations restricting capacity in the building.
At Cityspace, we can help you recognise any restrictions relating to your own circumstances and find solutions that are right for you.
Yes – if you provide us with your existing office floor plan, we are happy to meet and review current layouts.
During this meeting, we’ll consider factors like how many more people you need to fit in, restrictions on occupational density imposed by your fire officer or landlord, limitations on infrastructure, and the number of years left on your lease. From this conversation, we can then come up with the most practical and cost-efficient solutions for your particular circumstances.
Yes, we can. Cityspace offers a full office fit-out and project management service, which delivers flawless attention to detail at every step of the process. For more information, please take a look at the construction page.
We provide a comprehensive service within interior design, including workstyle consultancy, design concepts and 3D visuals. Our goal is to provide illustrations of solutions which are clear and easy to understand by a lay person who has little or no experience of design.
Often, clients find it hard to convey their preferences and why they like one look over another. At Cityspace, we can help you define your design style by showing a series of images and, through these images, identify your likes and dislikes of certain design styles.
By a process of elimination, we can then arrive at a design consensus. This provides us with a clear brief to carry into the interior design process, to come up with a design for you that reflects your own personal tastes, your brand, and the look you want to portray to both your staff and clients.
Once we’ve sorted the practical considerations of how best to fit people into a space, the next consideration of the interior designer is to select the materials and components to be incorporated into the scheme.
To bring the concept together, our designers will work with you to select materials and finishes, using physical samples of carpeting, stone, wallpaper, desk and metal finishes, chair coverings, etc., that will all work together to portray your brand identity and the desired look and feel you want to convey.
At the design stage, we have several means by which we can bring plans to life for clients and give them a clear visualisation of the space.
We use SketchUp, which creates a 3D image of your office plans and an illustrative cut-through, like a doll’s house view, so you can understand the size and structure of the office. You’ll also be able to see your chosen materials clad in colour, and at this stage we can also show you how different colour schemes look and work together.
Next, we can provide you photorealistic 3D images, in which we clad your chosen finishes onto a 3D wireframe drawing, giving you the closest possible realisation of how your new office will look.
Finally, we use 3D animations in which you are able to walk around your actual office and see the views from any angle.
In combination, these three techniques allow clients to intimately understand how their new design will look in real life, and how their new space will work for both their staff and their clients.
Workplace Study
Yes, we can. We can formulate a bespoke questionnaire to staff on how the current office space is used, what people struggle with and what needs fixing, and identify any environmental problems such as air conditioning, lighting or sun glare.
These surveys provide vital ‘back to the floor’ information, from whether individual workstations are configured correctly, through to auditing if meeting spaces are working well for colleagues and for clients.
For clients with complex or multi-site offices, we work with specialist partners and have conducted workspace audits and staff questionnaires worldwide.
Yes, we do. We know that clients want a productive workforce, in a motivational environment, designed in a way that fits the culture of the company. The goal of our work style consultancy is to find the solutions that work best for you and your teams, and make the most efficient use of your office space. We look at things like the suitability of the workstation environment, whether workstation layout is conducive to collaboration with others, and we also review the layout and use of both formal and informal meeting spaces.
Our approach depends on the complexity of your business. For companies of over 50 people, we can complete a full work style audit and organisational study, tailored to the limitations of your office, technology, culture and location. Smaller companies are unlikely to need a full work style study, and we can develop a bespoke plan by meeting your management team and discussing your requirements. If you’d like to discuss any aspects of workplace consultancy, please contact the Cityspace team.
We generally get involved in a change management project once the shape and size of the business have been determined by your management team. From this point, we can help you review your existing office space, based on current need and future growth plans, and prepare for you costs and timescales for any changes.
Furniture
Yes, we have an extensive catalogue of commercial furniture items from which clients can select, including desks and chairs, reception areas, soft furnishings, high tables, through to accessories like whiteboards, clocks, etc. This catalogue provides clients with consistency of product, finishes, price and delivery.
Because we buy in bulk and have negotiated deals with some of Europe’s leading commercial furniture manufacturers, our prices are very competitive, and we can also negotiate rates for furniture items on an annual basis.
We can guarantee continuity of supply on all our furniture products for at least 5 years, meaning clients are able to fully match the design, style, colour and finish of new furniture purchases with the existing items in their office.
All our furniture products have full manufacturing guarantees for at least 5 years, and in some cases for 10 years.
Yes, we offer framework agreements which give clients certainty of furniture costs and delivery over a given time period. We also offer volume rebates for larger orders.
Yes, our framework agreements provide significant advantages for large, multi-site occupiers, who often want clarity of future costs and consistency of product specification.
For these clients, we also hold an asset register detailing, in each location, the number of pieces and the colour, which helps clients ensure all their furniture fits together and looks the same if they decide to relocate teams within different sites.
Small orders are not a problem. We have a central warehouse where we obtain and assemble furniture, and a daily service van to drop off and install items in our clients’ offices.
Aftercare
We recognise that our clients’ requirements can change during the life of their office lease, and we therefore offer a full downstream interior design and alteration service.
No business stands still, and we can keep you fully up to speed with space planning changes, whether it be a change in working style, team layouts, updating branding, reconfiguring offices and meeting rooms, or working out how to fit another 20 people into a space.
We provide a full downstream interior design service for all alterations in keeping with the original design and also, uniquely within our industry, we aim to bring back the same site team from the initial project. This means the same trades that built your office will execute your alterations.
The great advantage of this is that we know your office, how it’s constructed, the house rules, and your landlord’s restrictions, meaning we can deliver any changes both quickly and effectively.
We have extensive experience in delivering construction changes onsite, in situ and out of hours. The secret to our success is our site managers who are highly skilled at understanding the sensitivities of office staff and dealing effectively with both landlords and building facilities teams.
We plan carefully to minimise the number of internal moves required around building work, and work effectively to deal with any dust, dirt or debris before staff return the next morning. And we’re realistic about how long things take, so we meet both our clients and their staff’s expectations.
Our contractors are all long-standing with Cityspace, and work to the highest professional standards in both occupied and out of hours situations.
Yes, we can fully manage all statutory and landlord approvals. Even relatively simple alterations, such as reconfiguring an office or meeting room, carry with them building standards requirements such as fresh air ventilation and fire detection systems, and also require landlord approval.
We can take care of the whole process, from getting authorisation from the landlord, ensuring works are within the rules and regulations of the building, and in adherence to all building standards and health and safety legislation.
At Cityspace, we know all about offices, and we also know that offices are all about people, so we can devise a plan and timetable of phased moves to minimise disruption and inconvenience to staff while any alteration works are undertaken.
Yes, we can agree in advance a cost framework for any alterations (either on a yearly basis or for the lease term).
Many occupiers experience difficulties when it comes to downstream interior design or construction changes, because their original supplier is simply not interested in coming back to help with smaller changes once the initial project is completed. Alternative contractors can turn out to be overpriced and unreliable.
We like to work in a long-term partnership with our clients, supporting them throughout the entire life of their lease.
Cityspace is not a maintenance contractor, however, we can recommend a number of very good firms that can provide clients with downstream maintenance, including 24-hour call out for emergencies. Just contact us and we can put you in touch with our recommended specialists in this area.
Yes, we are happy to provide warranties, which will vary according to the nature and complexity of the works.