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If you’ve lived through a renovation at home, you know it’s anything but relaxing. The disruption to your daily flow can cause many unwanted headaches. You can’t move through your home the way you used to, you can’t find anything, and worst of all – it’s a giant mess. Just like your home, living through a workplace renovation can also bring some unwanted stressors. Luckily, we’re able to help you navigate through this process and offer up a few solutions to surviving a renovation in your workspace.

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With more companies making the transition to a hybrid office, many employers are exploring ways to renovate their existing offices to meet these new standards of work. Even if your organization hasn’t adopted a hybrid model, there’s still an ongoing battle for top talent. Companies are looking to renovate their office space to attract and retain staff or boost employee engagement. Because most employers are trying to make better use of their existing space, a lot of people are having to live through office wide renovations. Have no fear, we’re here to offer up a few ways to make this process easier.

Workplace Renovations
Workplace Renovations
Workplace Technology

Since the onset of COVID-19, many of us have become somewhat familiar with working from home.  During this transition, most companies were able to boost their IT infrastructure and technology, making it easier for people to work remote. While renovating your office, the most cost effective and quickest option is to adopt a remote work policy during the time of construction.  When you’re able to work out of the way of construction, you save time and money.  A free open space gives the contractor the ability to come in, easily stage the site, get all trades in at once to knock out their scope of work, and move through the job quicker. These efficiencies also come as a cost saving to you. The biggest benefit – your staff can continue to work remote in a space that’s free of distractions, loud noises, and unwanted dust and debris.

Workplace Technology

Some organizations are also leasing temporary space that can be used during renovations. These spaces are typically smaller in square footage and focus more on a collaborative workspace. While most employees can do their heads down work a home, a temporary office still provides a common space where staff can come together, share ideas, and easily meet as a team. Most decision makers like this compromise. You’re keeping people out of the renovated space, which allows for a more efficient renovation, but you’re still giving people the opportunity to come together when it’s necessary or wanted.

Image Source: Redd on Unsplash 

Workplace Renovations
Workplace Renovations
Renovation

On the flip side, you have the option to work through the renovation in your space. We realize that not everyone has the luxury of totally vacating their office and leasing temporary space during office wide updates. With this approach, it’s important to develop a solid phasing plan. A phasing plan identifies what work will happen and when. This also helps you track when certain groups will see the most distraction or be displaced from their current workspace.  Through this process, we’re constantly trying to identify how we can complete the work with minimum distractions to business operations. Once a phase is complete and usable, the contactor will move onto the next phase. Although you have the benefit of not leaving your existing space, there are a few things to consider. This process typically takes more time. Moving from phase to phase does create some inefficiencies in the construction process, which then leads to increased costs. Some tasks like demolition or saw cutting concrete slabs can be very noisy and disruptive. For some of these more disruptive activities, you may choose to have this work performed over night or on the weekend. Again, these types of decisions reduce distractions, but increase the overall timeframe and costs.

Renovation

There’s a lot of think about when you decide to renovate your office. The truth is there’s no one size fits all solution for living through a renovation. The way your company works together and how you interface with your clients has a huge impact on what might work best for you. No matter what your goals are, our team is here to help guide you through this process.

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