Casinys - Planning an Office Refit While Your Team Keeps

Running a refurbishment while your team is still at their desks comes down to logistics more than construction. The trades can work later, the hoarding can go up, the noisy stuff can happen before eight in the morning. What kills a project is the small stuff: loading dock bookings, lift access, where the site crew parks, which toilets they use, how many power points sit on the nearest circuit. Sort those in week one and the rest usually goes fine. The trick is zoning. We divide the floor into work areas and quiet areas, then schedule trades so they only need access to one zone at a time. Staff move out of a zone on a Friday and back in on a Monday. Meeting rooms stay untouched until the very end. Breakout areas get done last because everyone can live without them for a fortnight. Noise is the biggest complaint we hear. Anything above 85 decibels can't happen during business hours, so hammer drills, core drilling and tile cutting all get pushed outside the working day or onto weekends. We book those with the building manager in advance and put a note in the programme so your office manager knows exactly when to expect the disruption. The last piece is communication. A weekly email with photos, what's happening next week and which areas will be affected is worth more than any project management software. When people know what's coming they stop worrying about it, and the project keeps moving without a single complaint landing on the building manager's desk.

Casinys crew working on a live Melbourne office floor — Zoned works in progress on a tenanted floor in Cremorne.

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Occupied office receiving a refurbishment

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Planning an Office Refit While Your Team Keeps Working

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