The Fit-Out Brief: 11 Things to Specify Before Sign-Off
An office fit-out is the one moment when almost every health and safety constraint a business will live with for the next decade is decided, and it is usually decided by people optimising for something else.
Property, finance and design teams are working to a budget, a programme and a desk count. Those are legitimate objectives. The consequence is that safety enters the process at practical completion, in the form of a risk assessment describing what has already been built.
Everything below costs very little at design stage. Most of it is expensive or impossible afterwards, which is the entire argument for putting it in the brief.
Eleven things to specify before the drawings are signed.
1. Escape routes for the occupancy you will actually have
Start here, because it constrains the layout more than anything else.
Article 14 of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 addresses emergency routes and exits, including that they lead as directly as possible to a place of safety and that they are kept clear.
The design question is whether the routes work for the density you are actually planning, including the peak days rather than the average. Densification after a fit-out is the norm, and escape capacity is the thing that does not stretch.
2. Compartmentation, and what the services will do to it
The point at which a fit-out most often degrades a building.
New partitions, ceiling voids, cable routes and service penetrations all interact with the building's compartmentation. Specify that penetrations are fire stopped to the appropriate standard, that the work is recorded, and that you receive that record.
Ask for it at handover. It is considerably harder to establish afterwards than to require in advance.
3. Evacuation for people who cannot use stairs
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The decision that is close to irreversible once the core is set.
Section 20 of the Equality Act 2010 requires reasonable steps where a physical feature puts a disabled person at a substantial disadvantage, and evacuation is where access and safety meet.
At design stage, refuge provision, the width and configuration of stairs, communication from refuges, and where evacuation equipment will be stored are all cheap. After completion they are a set of workarounds.
This is also the point to decide whether particular roles can be located on upper floors at all, which is an uncomfortable conversation that is far better had now.
4. Acoustics and zoning
The factor most likely to generate complaints for the life of the space.
Open plan without enough enclosed space produces a floor where calls are conducted in the open and concentrated work is difficult. The mitigations are cheap in the specification and expensive later: absorption in ceilings and soft finishes, genuinely quiet zones, and enough booths and small rooms for the way people actually work.
The number that matters is booths per head, and the common error is to specify against the number of formal meetings rather than the number of calls.
5. Lighting, including adjustability
Regulation 8 of the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 requires suitable and sufficient lighting.
Specify adjustable task lighting rather than uniform overhead illumination alone, attend to glare and to screen orientation relative to windows, and pay particular attention to stairs and level changes, where poor lighting produces injuries rather than discomfort.
6. Ventilation against real occupancy and equipment
Regulation 6 requires effective and suitable provision to ensure ventilation by fresh or purified air.
Specify against the occupancy you expect at peak and the equipment you expect to install, including anything in comms rooms and any hardware environment. Systems designed to the desk count on the drawing are the ones that struggle three years later.
7. Space, and the density you are planning
Regulation 10 addresses room dimensions and space, requiring sufficient floor area, height and unoccupied space for the purposes of health, safety and welfare.
Density decisions made at fit-out are the ones that determine whether circulation works, whether desks can be adjusted, and whether the space can absorb growth without becoming unworkable.
8. Welfare against peak, not headcount
Toilets, kitchens, rest facilities and changing provision are sized against people present rather than people employed.
For a hybrid organisation that means peak attendance days, not total headcount, and the two can differ by a factor that makes the calculation meaningless if done the usual way. This is also the moment to decide whether facilities for expressing milk, prayer or rest are provided as designed rooms or as improvisations later.
9. Workstations, adjustability and what is issued to people
Regulation 2 of the Display Screen Equipment Regulations requires analysis of workstations to assess risks to users.
Specify adjustable chairs and desks, screens at appropriate heights, separate keyboards and mice where laptops are the primary device, and enough desk surface for the equipment actually in use.
Where the organisation hot desks, specify equipment issued to the person rather than fixed to a position, because that single decision resolves most of the problems hot desking otherwise creates.
10. Plant, comms and storage rooms
The spaces that fall between functions, designed last and assessed never.
Specify ventilation for battery and equipment rooms against the load you will actually install, access control and a means of raising an alarm from inside, lighting that is not on a short timer, and floor loading for any area intended for dense storage.
Decide at design stage whether a suppression system is being installed and, if so, how it will be isolated for maintenance and how people will be warned.
11. Signage, wayfinding and the handover pack
Two things that get left to the end and should be specified at the start.
Signage should be designed as part of the scheme rather than added afterwards, which is how buildings end up with laminated notices competing with statutory signage.
And specify the handover pack in the brief: the fire stopping record, the commissioning and testing certificates, the asbestos position where relevant, operation and maintenance manuals, and the as-built drawings. Chasing these after the contractor has demobilised is the most predictable administrative failure in any fit-out.
The eleven, in short
| Specify | Because retrofitting it is |
|---|---|
| Escape routes for peak occupancy | Impossible once the core is fixed |
| Fire stopping, recorded | Hard to establish later |
| Refuges, stair width, equipment storage | A set of workarounds |
| Acoustics, absorption, booths per head | Expensive and disruptive |
| Adjustable task lighting | Cheap now, a project later |
| Ventilation against real load | A capital item |
| Space and density | The constraint on everything else |
| Welfare against peak attendance | Structural |
| Adjustable workstations, equipment to the person | Bought twice |
| Plant and comms rooms | Rarely revisited until an incident |
| Signage and the handover pack | Chased for months |
The right-hand column is the argument. None of this is an appeal to compliance. It is that a decision taken in a week of design defines what the organisation can do for the length of the lease.
For international fit-out programmes
Two considerations.
The standards are national. Escape provision, accessibility requirements, welfare ratios and equipment examination regimes all differ, and several jurisdictions covered in this series require documents a British programme would not produce. Croatia requires an evacuation plan with a graphical part and practical drills. Estonia files the risk analysis into a state database. Kenya requires a separate annual fire safety audit by an approved auditor.
The moment to establish that is the brief. A group fit-out standard describing intent will transfer. The specifications and the certificates will not, and discovering that at handover is the expensive version.
Holding the brief, the handover pack and the subsequent assessments for every site in one register is where health and safety consultants and software are worth more together than either alone, and periodic health and safety audits reliably find buildings whose documentation stopped at practical completion.
Where Arinite fits
Arinite is most useful before a fit-out rather than after one, because at design stage the answer to almost every question is cheap. We support 1,500+ businesses across 50+ countries and protect 100,000+ employees, with 95%+ client retention over 15+ years. Our health and safety consultants work extensively with legal, finance and banking and IT and software organisations, and our fire risk assessment work covers the strategy a fit-out either supports or quietly degrades.
Where a programme covers offices in several countries, our global health and safety consultants establish what each jurisdiction requires of the design and the handover, and our international health and safety consultants keep that current.
If a fit-out is being designed now and nobody has read the brief for any of the above, a free gap analysis is the cheapest it will ever be to fix.
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Arinite Health & Safety Consultants
Health & Safety Expert at Arinite
