A fit-out project is won before the first sketch. Framing, budget, contracting, schedule, relocation: the complete ten-step method, with the milestones to set and the pitfalls to avoid.
"Where do we start? Everyone has an opinion, no one has the method"
Without preparation, every trade-off comes at the worst possible moment: mid-construction, at top dollar and with no alternative. Structuring choices, floor areas, partitioning, technical systems, are then made by default, dictated by the schedule rather than by use.
A budget set without programming is discovered quote by quote. Forgotten items, relocation, low-voltage systems, permits, specific furniture, surface late and get funded by cutting into what was the core of the project.
Teams presented with a done deal do not inhabit their new spaces, they endure them. The investment is the same, the result has nothing in common: change management is prepared upstream, not the week of the move.
Kytom gets involved from the preparation phase: occupancy audit, programming, costed layout scenarios, then design and build by a single team that carries responsibility for the result. More than 1,200 projects delivered since 2006 feed our ratios and our safeguards. To dig deeper into each step: the fit-out project brief to formalise the framing, the comparison design-build or separate trade packages for contracting, the real duration of a fit-out project for the schedule, and the phasing of works in an occupied site if you stay put.
Perceived occupancy almost always deceives: "full" floors show much lower presence rates once measured. Before any decision, get the facts: occupancy readings over several weeks, interviews with teams, mapping of actual uses, including meeting rooms. Pitfall to avoid: sizing the future site on the theoretical headcount from the lease rather than on measured presence and its three-year projection.
A fit-out project needs an executive sponsor who settles trade-offs, an identified and available internal project manager, and team liaisons who feed back on uses. The works council is consulted at the right time, not once the plans are frozen. Pitfall to avoid: handing the project "on top of everything" to an already overloaded employee, with no clear mandate or dedicated time.
A useful budget is not a number, it is a structure: construction and fit-out costs, furniture, relocation, fees, contingency provisions. Complete projects are generally established between 800 and 1,500 euros excl. VAT/sqm depending on ambition and the condition of the floors. Decide from the outset what is fixed and what can be adjusted. Pitfall to avoid: announcing a budget with no contingency provision, so every unforeseen event becomes a renegotiation.
Two main routes: separate trade packages, where you coordinate architect, engineering firms and contractors, and a single design-build team, one point of contact responsible for the result end to end. The right choice depends on your internal resources and your appetite for project management. Pitfall to avoid: underestimating the coordination time for separate packages when no one internally can take it on day to day.
A project schedule is built backwards from the move-in date, factoring in the fixed lead times: administrative permits, consultation of employee bodies, long procurement, building shutdown periods. Identify the points of no return, furniture order, lease termination, and secure each approval upstream. Pitfall to avoid: treating permit timelines as formalities that can be parallelised indefinitely.
Programming turns the framing into floor areas: workstation ratios, space typologies, meeting rooms, focus and social areas, technical and support rooms. It is what verifies that a target site can genuinely accommodate the project, before committing to a lease. Pitfall to avoid: viewing floors and picturing it "by eye", with no capacity test or compared layout scenarios.
An appealing plan is not a workable plan. Require the design to address the thankless topics on the same level as the imagery: acoustics, circulation flows, ventilation, lighting, storage, maintenance. Every perspective must be able to answer the question "how do we work here on an ordinary Tuesday?". Pitfall to avoid: approving visuals without having checked ceiling heights, technical grids and the building's constraints.
Before the works: permits and declarations, building regulations, notifying neighbours, access and deliveries, protection of existing features. If the site remains occupied during the works, the phasing is designed from the preparation stage: buffer zones, controlled nuisances, continuity of critical services. Pitfall to avoid: discovering the building manager's constraints, hours, freight lift, permitted nuisances, when signing off the works schedule.
The move is a project within the project: inventories, archiving and sorting, IT continuity, signage, per-employee setup kits. A well-prepared relocation happens over a weekend, teams work on Monday morning. Pitfall to avoid: treating the IT switchover as a matter for the moving contractor, with no dress rehearsal or rollback plan.
A fit-out is judged in use. Plan from the outset a measurement milestone a few months after move-in: actual occupancy rates, feedback from teams, technical fine-tuning, micro-adjustments to the layout. It is this closing loop that turns a delivered project into adopted spaces. Pitfall to avoid: disbanding the project team on handover day, with no one identified to look after the life of the site.
"We had been through a first fit-out painfully, decided in three weeks under lease pressure. The second time, the ten steps were rolled out: the committee settled trade-offs on costed scenarios, the works produced no surprises and the teams were operational on Monday morning."