Team Floor renovation

Reuse of raised access flooring

A resource present in the majority of post-1990 floor plates

Reusing a raised access floor saves 35 to 60% on this line item, not 5% on the project’s overall carbon footprint. The accounting hierarchy of reuse is the reverse of the one usually put forward: the immediate financial gain, 15 to 40 EUR/m2, is more decisive for the asset decision than the BREEAM Mat 06 credit. The sector recovers the vast majority of existing panels after removal, inspects them in accordance with NF EN 12825 and reinstalls them with laser levelling, within a 12-week schedule, with a controlled breakage rate. Kytom has been structuring this practice since 2006, with PEMD traceability kept for 10 years (AGEC law). The following pages detail the regulatory framework, the operational method, the economic trade-offs and the configurations in which reuse ceases to be relevant.

Since 2022, the AGEC law has required a Products-Equipment-Materials-Waste (PEMD) diagnosis for any demolition or renovation operation exceeding 1,000 m2. Raised access flooring, present in the vast majority of office floor plates built after 1990, constitutes a resource that can be reused directly on site, without heavy external logistics.

The economic orders of magnitude shape the decision from the preliminary design stage; the values for new products come from manufacturers’ technical data sheets, those for reused products from our recent projects:

600 x 600 mm steel-mortar panel: weight 14 to 18 kg, technical service life exceeding 30 years (NF EN 12825, reference value for office use);
equivalent new panel: 35 to 75 EUR excl. tax, excluding installation;
reused panel after inspection: 4 to 12 EUR excl. tax, excluding installation;
share of the raised floor line item in the fit-out budget: 8 to 14%.

These ranges are calibrated to the type of floor plate, its surface area, the expected finish level and the actual condition of the resource: we adjust the budget to the need, from small floor plates to multi-storey operations. Our reading differs from the dominant discourse on this specific point: professional orthodoxy emphasises the BREEAM Mat 06 credit and the carbon argument as decision drivers. In practice, on our recent projects where the resource was put to value, the budget trigger, i.e. 35 to 60% savings on the line item, precedes the extra-financial argument in investment committees. The BREEAM, HQE and WELL frameworks reward reuse through dedicated credits, but these credits act as validation accelerators, not as triggers. Kytom operates within this scope across its 11 branches, with a systematic audit before removal, in line with the Qualibat requirements applicable to office fit-out companies.

What is the real financial gain from reusing a raised access floor on an office floor plate?

On a floor plate of average surface area, reusing a raised access floor frees up 12,000 to 35,000 EUR, i.e. 35 to 60% savings on this line item. The reused panel after inspection comes out at 4 to 12 EUR excl. tax, compared with 35 to 75 EUR excl. tax for an equivalent new panel, including the additional logistics cost of sorting and reconditioning. This budget is often redeployed onto line items with immediate use value: acoustics, lighting, furniture.