Refurbishing an office is one thing. Refurbishing it while 150 people are still trying to get on with their working day is quite another.
Suddenly, it's not just about when the builders can get started. It's about where people are going to work, whether meeting rooms will still be available and what happens when something needs switching off.
For larger organisations, even a relatively small disruption can have consequences across the business. A planned power shutdown might affect several departments. Closing a meeting suite could leave client-facing teams without anywhere suitable to work. And moving employees into temporary accommodation isn't particularly helpful if nobody has checked whether the Wi-Fi can cope.
None of these problems is especially unusual. In fact, most are entirely predictable. The difficulty comes when the construction programme has been developed before anyone has properly understood how the business needs to operate around it.
A phased office refurbishment allows construction to take place in stages while the organisation continues operating in unaffected areas. Done properly, it can reduce disruption, avoid unnecessary relocation and help maintain productivity. But it relies on understanding the building, its people and its operational dependencies well before work begins.
Here's how we'd approach it.
Before deciding which floor gets refurbished first, it's worth understanding what happens inside the building on a typical working day.
Which departments need to remain operational? Where do employees spend most of their time? Are there particular days when occupancy peaks? Which facilities do people genuinely rely on?
And perhaps most importantly, what absolutely cannot stop?
For some organisations, that might be access to client meeting rooms or uninterrupted IT connectivity. For others, there may be secure areas, specialist equipment or operational processes that make moving people considerably more complicated.
These are the details that should shape the refurbishment programme. Not simply which part of the floor plan looks easiest to tackle first.
We'd usually begin by speaking to the people who understand the building best: facilities managers, IT teams, department heads and, importantly, the employees using it every day.
Workplace utilisation data can help too. If one department is rarely at full occupancy on certain days, there may be opportunities to accommodate temporary moves without needing additional office space.
The point is to understand how the organisation actually works, rather than making assumptions based on how the space was originally designed.
If you're still establishing your wider requirements, our guide to planning a large corporate office fit-out is a useful starting point.
Once you've established what needs to keep running, the next question is how to divide the building into manageable phases.
The obvious approach might be to complete one floor at a time, or move progressively through individual departments. Sometimes that works perfectly well. Other times, the layout of the building makes things rather less straightforward.
An area might look relatively self-contained on a drawing, only to discover that its electrical distribution also serves the floor above. Or that the main route to another department passes directly through the proposed construction zone.
Even something as simple as relocating a reception area can have consequences for visitor access, security and how people move through the building.
This is why phasing needs to be developed alongside the building's technical and operational requirements, rather than treated as a separate construction exercise.
Each phase should consider how employees and contractors will access their respective areas, whether essential services can remain operational and how the construction zone can be safely separated from the rest of the workplace.
Temporary hoarding, alternative circulation routes and carefully planned service isolations can all help. But the earlier these requirements are identified, the easier they are to incorporate into the programme.
Getting the sequence right at this stage can save a surprising amount of disruption later.
One of the biggest questions in any occupied refurbishment is what happens to the people who normally work in the area being refurbished.
If you're taking 40 desks out of use, you need somewhere for those 40 people to go. But finding 40 spare desks doesn't necessarily solve the problem.
They might need private meeting rooms, access to colleagues in other departments, secure storage or particular technical equipment. Moving everyone into an area that technically has enough seats but doesn't support their working day is unlikely to go down particularly well.
Depending on the organisation, there are several ways to manage this.
Some businesses can use spare capacity elsewhere in the building. Others move teams into completed phases as the project progresses. Temporary accommodation or another company location might make sense, while hybrid working can create additional flexibility.
The right answer depends on how people work and how much disruption the business can reasonably accommodate.
This is where workplace strategy becomes particularly useful. Understanding utilisation, working patterns and departmental relationships can help identify opportunities that aren't obvious from headcount alone.
For example, if a department only requires its full desk capacity two days a week, there may be scope to adjust working arrangements temporarily without compromising productivity.
Of course, that needs proper discussion with the people affected. Telling everyone to work from home for the next six months might solve a construction problem, but it could create a different set of problems for the business.
The goal isn't simply to move employees out of the way. It's to make sure they can continue working effectively while their usual space is being transformed.
There's no pretending that construction work is completely silent, dust-free or invisible.
At some point, somebody will need to drill into something, remove something or move something fairly substantial through the building. And if that happens next to a department trying to hold client calls all afternoon, there's a good chance you'll hear about it.
The solution is to understand which activities are likely to cause the greatest disruption and plan them around the building's operational requirements.
That could mean scheduling particularly noisy work in the evenings, arranging deliveries outside peak arrival times or completing service shutdowns over a weekend.
It also means properly separating construction areas from occupied spaces, with suitable arrangements for contractor access, dust management and employee safety.
The Health and Safety Executive's guidance on construction dust is particularly relevant here. Dust isn't simply an inconvenience for the people working nearby; it needs to be managed as a potential health risk.
When we refurbished Titan Airways House, the first floor remained occupied while construction was taking place on the ground floor.
That meant the programme had to accommodate the client's day-to-day operations rather than expecting employees to work around whatever construction activity happened to be taking place.
Some electrical and alarm works began as early as 3am, while crane activities were scheduled for a Saturday. The team also worked closely with the client to communicate planned activity and reduce unexpected disruption.
These arrangements aren't necessarily the easiest way to organise a construction programme. But they were the right way to organise it for the business occupying the building.
And that distinction matters.
A refurbishment programme that looks efficient on paper isn't particularly successful if it's preventing the organisation from doing its job.
This is where phased refurbishments can become technically challenging.
The walls might neatly separate the construction zone from the occupied office, but the building's services don't always follow the same boundaries.
Power, data, heating, cooling, ventilation, fire alarms and access-control systems may serve several areas simultaneously. Changing something in one part of the building can therefore affect people working somewhere completely different.
It's worth understanding these dependencies before the phasing programme is agreed.
For example, removing a ceiling in an unoccupied area might seem relatively straightforward. But what if that ceiling contains services supplying the occupied office next door? Suddenly, a fairly routine activity requires a much more carefully coordinated approach.
This is why facilities teams, IT specialists and relevant contractors need to be involved early. Existing services should be investigated, affected systems identified and any necessary temporary arrangements planned before construction begins.
Planned shutdowns should also be communicated well in advance, particularly where essential IT systems or operational equipment are involved.
Fire safety requires the same attention. Escape routes, alarm coverage and other life-safety arrangements must remain suitable throughout the changing phases of occupation and construction.
None of this means a phased refurbishment is inherently difficult to deliver. It means the programme needs to reflect how the building actually functions, rather than how neatly it can be divided on a drawing.
For organisations operating more technically demanding facilities, these issues can become even more significant. We've explored this in How to Minimise Downtime as an Advanced Manufacturing Organisation, where interruptions to services or equipment can have direct consequences for production.
Communication is one of those things everyone agrees is important, right up until the project gets busy and nobody remembers to tell the third-floor team that their usual entrance is closing on Monday.
An occupied refurbishment affects people who aren't directly involved in delivering the project. They still need to understand what's happening, particularly when it changes how they use the workplace.
Regular updates help, but they don't need to be complicated.
Employees should know which areas are being refurbished, when disruptive activities are expected, whether their working arrangements will change and who to speak to if there's a problem.
It's also useful to involve department managers, facilities, HR and IT in planning these communications. They'll often know about upcoming activities or business requirements that could be affected by a particular construction phase.
And things will change. Even the best-planned refurbishment can encounter an unexpected condition or require an adjustment to the programme.
The important thing is communicating those changes clearly rather than allowing employees to discover them for themselves.
There's also value in listening to feedback. Sometimes an arrangement that seems perfectly reasonable during planning turns out to be rather inconvenient in practice.
Finding that out early gives the project team an opportunity to put it right before a minor frustration becomes a much bigger issue.
Finishing the building work is only part of completing a refurbishment phase.
Before employees return, the space needs to be ready to function as a workplace.
That means checking the obvious things, such as furniture, lighting and finishes, but also everything people depend on to get through the working day.
Does the Wi-Fi work properly? Have meeting-room systems been tested? Is access control configured correctly? Are the heating and ventilation systems operating as intended? Do employees know where they're moving and when?
These details might sound relatively minor compared with the construction itself, but they're often the things people notice first.
We recommend treating the completion of each phase as a proper handover, with coordinated checks involving the project team, facilities and IT.
Depending on the works, that may include commissioning relevant building services, completing necessary safety checks and confirming that the space is suitable for occupation.
It's also worth planning the move itself carefully, particularly if teams are relocating between different areas of the building.
Only once people have been successfully accommodated in the completed space should the next area be taken out of use.
Otherwise, there's a risk of creating a situation where construction is progressing exactly as planned, but employees are still dealing with problems in the supposedly finished areas.
Not necessarily, and this is something we'd encourage organisations to consider before committing to a particular programme.
Keeping a building occupied during refurbishment can offer some obvious advantages. You may avoid the expense of temporary accommodation, reduce the upheaval of relocating employees and allow the organisation to continue operating from its existing premises.
But phased delivery can also introduce additional costs and complexity.
Temporary partitions, repeated moves, out-of-hours working and maintaining services across occupied and unoccupied areas can all influence the programme and budget.
In some cases, it may be more cost-effective to temporarily vacate the space and complete the work in one continuous programme. In others, the operational and financial consequences of moving everyone elsewhere make phasing the more sensible option.
There isn't a universal answer.
What matters is comparing the options properly, including the construction costs, programme implications, business continuity requirements and effect on employees.
The decision should be made with a clear understanding of the whole picture, rather than assuming that keeping everyone in the building will automatically save money.
There's a difference between completing a refurbishment while a building remains occupied and completing it without unnecessarily disrupting the organisation inside it.
The first is largely a construction challenge. The second requires a proper understanding of the business.
It means knowing when employees need particular spaces, which services cannot be interrupted and how different teams rely on the building. It means thinking through temporary arrangements before they're needed and recognising that a technically convenient construction sequence might not be the best operational solution.
And occasionally, it means starting work at 3am because that's when it makes the most sense for the client.
At Habit Action, we believe the best refurbishment programmes are developed around the organisation's requirements from the outset. The earlier you understand the operational challenges, the more opportunity you have to design around them rather than deal with the consequences later.
If you're considering a major office refurbishment, our Office Fit-Out Planning Readiness Assessment can help identify the decisions and potential gaps worth addressing before the project moves forward.
After all, you're investing in a better workplace. It would be a shame if getting there meant bringing the business to a halt.
Yes. An office can often be refurbished in phases, allowing employees to continue working in unaffected areas or temporary spaces. The approach depends on the building layout, essential services, operational requirements and whether occupied areas can be safely separated from construction activity.
Start by identifying the business activities and services that need to remain operational. Then develop a phased programme that protects occupied areas, provides suitable temporary workspaces and schedules disruptive activities around the working day.
It can be. Phased refurbishment may require additional hoarding, temporary services, out-of-hours working and multiple employee moves. However, these costs need to be compared against temporary relocation expenses and the operational impact of vacating the building.
That depends on the size and condition of the building, the scope of work, the number of phases and the organisation's operational constraints. Working around occupied areas can extend the programme, particularly where shutdowns or disruptive activities are limited to particular hours.
A phasing plan should identify construction zones, temporary employee locations, access and circulation routes, critical building services, planned shutdowns, safety arrangements, communication requirements and the sequence for completing and handing over each area.