How To Hire An Office Spaceplan/Design Firm
By Jeffrey S. Weil, MCR.h, CCIM, SIOR
Senior Vice President
Colliers International
jweil@colliersparrish.com
(925) 279-5590
I have been advising corporate office clients for the past 28 years on almost every aspect imaginable with regard to the leasing, subleasing and ownership of office space. During recent years I have been involved on a number of occasions in the actual selection process of deciding which spaceplanner/design firm the client should engage. This has led to a multitude of additional factors involved in this professional services search so I thought a more in-depth discussion of this process might assist other firms about to embark on this journey.
There are a great number of questions the office user must ask themselves prior to initiating contact with the spaceplanner/design firm. Are you planning a remodel of existing space, relocating to a leased facility, subleasing, or redesigning a building you own or plan to purchase? Is this a 3,000 square foot project or is it a 300,000 square foot endeavor? Is it customary in your particular marketplace for the landlords to typically engage and compensate the spaceplanning function as part of their project marketing? Are you a local branch of a national or multi-national firm that has in-house design back at headquarters that you will be required to utilize or are you free to engage your own design firms? Does your company have an ongoing relationship with a national or international design firm? Are you in a stable predictable industry where clients expect the “norm” or are you cutting-edge, creativity-rules? How extensive will the project be? How much lead time do you have? We will attempt to answer all of these questions while perhaps raising additional issues that, by being brought to the surface early in your process may save you and your company time, money, and stress.
Spaceplanners and design firms may be differentiated as follows… the spaceplanner draws the client’s collected thoughts since the client doesn’t necessarily have the in-house capability to draw and put a set of documents together. Spaceplanners may not be architects but may have one registered architetect in-house who can sign and stamp drawings. Spaceplanners typically represent developers rather than the client. Design firms typically get brought on board at the very early stages of the project as the client is going through a due diligence and internal strategy about how their business is growing or shrinking. Design firms become a team/partner to the real estate broker and the client at the early stages and participate in an advisory role to help the team make the best business decision. Design firms bring a design / architectural solution to every client’s specific needs or challenges. Firms range in size from a one-person boutique firm to large international design companies with thousands of employees and dozens of offices. There may also be specialization whereby a designer or his/her firm is known by the focus on a particular niche such as biotech, restaurant –related, or high-tech. A firm may have had vast amounts of experience with specific industries such as engineering, legal, insurance, and it is important to recognize that just as you might not want an expert podiatrist to take care of your lung problems, the designer with vast call center expertise may not do your laboratory design justice.
The design of your office space can set the tone for who you are, what statement are you trying to make to clients, competitors, financial analysts, and vendors. I’ve represented legal firms who wanted to go to “vanilla” office design verses high-end so their clients might not think their fees were excessive in part due to ostentatious work surroundings. A video game software firm might want wild, creative space to attract and retain cutting-edge software programmers, whereas an old-line insurance company might have its corporate color and layout mandatory per corporate standards.
If you are considering subleasing office space in almost all cases, the sublessor is offering the space “as-is”, has significantly discounted the rental rate to reflect this, and usually does not offer any spaceplanning or tenant improvement budgets. Thus, it is up to the potential sublessee to work the economics of the sublease, the remaining lease term, the existing layout and condition, how this matches up with its own requirements, and whether the space is “plug & play” or totally empty to make its decision on how much money it will spend to make the space work for its business.
A company’s exit strategy might come into play during the initial design process. If there is a high degree of outgrowing the space, or downsizing, in either case potentially having to sublet the premises, the farther from “normal” the color scheme and layout the more difficult it might be to sublet. Most office tenants today are using a 70% open/30% private office/conference room ratio with neutral colors that work with a wide range of furniture and workstations. While repainting/recarpeting may be more easily accomplished, changing hard-wall office configurations or demolishing costly private offices still being paid for in amortized monthly rent may be more painful to deal with.
In many regions the landlords have already engaged the services of their own spaceplanner, and once their project has made your short list of top 2-3 alternatives they will usually at their expense offer initial spaceplanning to give you a feel of how your firm lays out in their project as well as give both sides a flavor of how extensive the cost of tenant improvements might be. If you hire your own design firm, will you be reimbursed or will this just be an additional cost to you? Will an outside firm be more objective, not having the same fiduciary and contractual relationships as the designer who has been employed by the same landlord on the same project for many years, and conversely, might this depth of experience in knowing intimately the building mechanical, electrical, exiting and other aspects possibly prove invaluable in most efficiently laying out of your space? There are no easy answers to these questions as I have seen both approaches be beneficial to the tenant.
What is the decision-process of your firm? This can run all the way from you being the owner and making all the decisions to dealing with seven partners in a law firm, four executive board members, or a corporate real estate department that runs your process. It is vital that when there are multiple decision-makers who have a key stake in the space design that there is consensus right in the beginning. It can be extremely costly to have had tacet approval by the few who were out of town when the initial meetings were held, only to have expensive change orders made later in the working drawing stage or worse yet during actual construction.
Spaceplanning usually includes programming a clients needs, putting together a block plan or preliminary space plan, getting the clients feedback, revising the plan, then perhaps getting rough preliminary cost estimates before proceeding to the formal working drawings and construction documents. For a smaller space requirement, i.e. 10,000 square feet, the client may be asked to put together a list of the employees, what they do, whom they interface with, the approximate size of their office or workstation, the type, sizes and dimensions of auxiliary rooms such as the lunch room, the telephone server room, storage, file room, reception, and conference rooms. A list as detailed as possible of the equipment and furniture that accompany each employee is also most helpful at this stage. Will the employee have a flat screen monitor, their own printer, does the copier need a dedicated circuit, will the server room require 24-7 HVAC? How many people will usually be seated at one time in the lunch room, reception, and how large a conference table does the company have if they plan on utilizing existing furniture?
How large will your project be and how does this match up with the type and size of the design firm? A 3,000 square foot CPA firm might be too small for a multi-national design firm more familiar with headquarter assignments, and similarly, the 100,000 square foot headquarters job might swamp the small boutique firm.
Will you be just contracting for a specific portion of the overall project, i.e. designing the layout for the initial occupancy, or might the scope entail additional expansion premises design work, finish selection and even furniture recommendations? Many spaceplanners are also willing to assist in interfacing with the general contractor, while others have project management specialists who help with this. Some design firms have in-house office furniture procurement departments which may facilitate integrating the furniture/workstations with the office layout. However, as this may be a separate profit center are they limited to select vendors, and how does this pricing compare to an independent office furniture dealer?
What are the various methods of ascertaining which spaceplanner/design firm is most appropriate for your requirement? Ask your professional advisors like your exclusive tenant representative broker whom they recommend and why. Find out who your firm has used in the past. Ask your industry peers who they have utilized and how satisfied were they with the results. The scope and location of the project may dictate the universe of potential design firms, as smaller more generic assignments may be well-served with a local design firm intimate with the city planning regulations and planning staff who can facilitate the process through their past and on-going personal relationships. There may be a learning curve in having a design firm unfamiliar with local life-safety and fire ordinances or without long-term city staff relationships.
How important is confidentiality? While some firms are honored when their layout design is showcased by the design firm as a case study or entered for architectural awards, in other industries the design itself may divulge competitive secrets about how the firm runs its business. If confidentiality is an issue disclose this upfront and most likely as part of the contract.
How to interview depends on your particular process and size and scope of assignment. If you are a 5,000 square foot office tenant headed out to the leasing market in most cases spaceplanning will be provided by the landlord. However, for larger assignments, for subleasing, and if you own or plan to purchase an office facility there are many methods in which to interview design firms. You might consider hiring a project manager who might prepare a scope of services, assist you with recommendations, architectural contract negotiations, and interface with the designer and the general contractor throughout the process. If you hear the same two or three names being suggested by everyone you ask recommendations of you might want to arrange an interview with each of these. This can be done at your or at their place of business, and there are benefits to each location. At their facility you can see how they run their business, other types of projects they are engaged in, atmosphere, etc. At your place of business they can get the feel for who you are, which may or may not impact who you want to be in the new or renovated location.
I have attached a simple list of issues that might be part of your questionnaire. For multiple decision-makers I have prepared grading guides whereby during the interview each company officer or partner can rate or grade various aspects which can be used to collate and document how each design firm does with respect to interview issues you believe important. Items on this grid may include experience in your industry, availability for this assignment, familiarity with the local city planning staff, pricing, creativeness, how well they seem to understand your company and who you are, etc.
By: Jeffrey S. Weil, MCR.h, CCIM, SIOR, Senior Vice President
COLLIERS INTERNATIONAL
1850 Mt. Diablo Blvd. Suite 200, Walnut Creek, CA 94596
Phone: 925.279.5590 Fax: 925.279.0450
jweil@colliersparrish.com www.officetimes.com