For the last few years, the debate around office attendance has largely been framed as a people and workplace issue. How many days should employees come in? Should attendance be mandated? What type of environment will encourage people back? Those questions matter, but from a cost and investment perspective there is another one that deserves just as much attention: how much capital should a business commit when it is still uncertain about how the workplace will actually be used?
Recent occupier research suggests office utilisation is increasing, but the exact pattern remains organisation-specific. Average attendance can also hide significant pressure on peak days, particularly in the middle of the week. Most clients understand that now.
The more important commercial question is what you do with that uncertainty.
If attendance, headcount and space requirements may change over the next three, five or ten years, the investment strategy should reflect that rather than pretending the brief is fixed.
Capital should follow confidence
The lower the confidence in the future requirement, the more careful I think a client should be about committing capital to solutions that are difficult or expensive to change.
That does not automatically mean spending less. It may mean spending differently.
For example, there may be value in using demountable partitions, flexible furniture, adaptable meeting spaces, spare MEP capacity or infrastructure that allows future changes to be made without substantial reconstruction.
Some of those choices may increase the initial capital cost, but they also create option value. The client is effectively paying a relatively small premium today to reduce the cost and disruption of change later.
The commercial question is therefore not simply, “what is the cheapest option now?”
It is, “what level of flexibility is worth paying for, given the uncertainty in the brief?”
That is a much more useful discussion.
Flexibility needs to be quantified
I think flexibility is sometimes treated as an inherently good thing.
It is not necessarily.
A more flexible solution usually has a cost, and that cost should be tested against the likelihood and consequence of future change.
If a demountable partition costs significantly more than a conventional partition, but there is very little chance the space will ever be altered, the premium may provide limited value.
If the business regularly reorganises teams, expects significant headcount growth or is genuinely uncertain about its future attendance pattern, the same investment could be entirely justified.
The job of the cost consultant should be to make that trade-off visible.
What does the flexible option cost now? What future change does it avoid? What would that change cost if it happened later? What is the programme and operational disruption associated with it?
Once those questions are quantified, flexibility stops being a design aspiration and becomes a commercial decision.
Scenario planning is more useful than a single assumption
Where the future requirement is uncertain, scenario planning can be preferable to building the entire cost plan around one forecast, particularly in the early design stages.
Rather than assuming that attendance will settle at a particular percentage, test a small number of credible scenarios.
What happens if attendance remains broadly where it is today? What happens if it increases materially? What happens if headcount grows? What happens if the organisation decides that more collaborative or client-facing space is required?
The cost plan can then test the capital implications of each scenario and, importantly, identify which expenditure needs to be committed now and which can reasonably be deferred.
That may show that a relatively modest amount of pre-engineering work today gives the client significant flexibility later.
It may also show the opposite: that delaying investment would create more cost, disruption and abortive work than dealing with it properly at the outset.
The important point is that the uncertainty is being treated commercially rather than simply pushed into the brief.
Day 2 expenditure is not necessarily failure
The same principle applies to Day 2 works.
We often treat post-occupation expenditure as evidence that the original project got something wrong. Sometimes it is, but not always.
If the client’s future requirements are genuinely uncertain, deliberately phasing part of the investment can be commercially sensible.
The critical distinction is whether Day 2 expenditure has been planned or simply discovered.
If the client knows what might need to change, understands what that future intervention would cost and makes the right infrastructure decisions during the original project, future capital expenditure can form part of the original investment strategy.
That is very different from underinvesting initially and then discovering six months later that the workplace does not work.
The commercial impact of the brief needs to stay visible
This is where I think clients can get themselves into difficulty.
I increasingly see occupiers going directly to design and build contractors with a relatively loose brief and no independent cost or project advice.
For me, that is a fundamental mistake, particularly where the client’s requirements are still evolving.
Design and build can be an entirely appropriate procurement route. The issue is not D&B itself.
The issue is putting design, pricing and delivery under one roof before the client has properly defined what it wants and what it should cost.
When that happens, the commercial position can become opaque very quickly.
The client may see a single headline price, but it becomes much harder to understand how much is being spent on individual design decisions, what assumptions are sitting behind the price, where risk allowances have been included and what premium is being paid for programme or uncertainty.
That matters even more where flexibility is one of the client’s key objectives.
Transparency becomes more important when the brief is uncertain
If a client knows exactly what it wants, the commercial process is relatively straightforward.
If the client is still testing attendance, headcount, space mix and future flexibility, then every design decision potentially has a different cost consequence.
The client therefore needs an auditable decision-making process.
If we change the desk ratio, what does that do to the fit-out cost?
If we increase meeting-room provision, what is the MEP and AV consequence?
If we want more flexibility in the partitions, what premium are we paying?
If we defer part of the investment until Day 2, what infrastructure needs to be included now?
If we reduce the floorplate, does the remaining space need to work harder and therefore cost more per square foot?
Those questions need to remain visible as the design develops.
That becomes much harder if the same organisation is designing the solution, pricing it and carrying the contractual risk of delivering it within a fixed programme.
A D&B contractor has a different commercial problem to solve
This is an important distinction.
A design and build contractor is being asked to deliver the project for an agreed price and programme while managing the risks they have taken on.
That is their commercial responsibility, and there is nothing wrong with it.
But it is not necessarily the same question the client needs answered.
The client’s question is:
“What is the best commercial decision for our business?”
The contractor’s question is inevitably influenced by:
“How can we deliver this solution within the price, programme and risk position we have agreed?”
Those objectives can align, but they are not identical.
If the brief changes or remains uncertain, the contractor has to price that uncertainty and protect the programme. They may quite reasonably recommend an option that reduces their delivery risk.
That does not automatically mean it represents the best capital decision for the occupier.
This is why I think independent advice really matters.
Independent cost advice protects the decision-making process
An independent cost consultant should be able to separate the design decision from the commercial consequence.
If the client wants to consider three different workplace scenarios, the QS can test each one independently and show the capital impact, programme implications and risks.
If a contractor proposes a change, the client has someone who can assess whether the price is reasonable and whether there are alternative ways of achieving the same outcome.
If flexibility carries a premium, the client can see what that premium is and decide whether the future benefit justifies it.
This is particularly important on fast-moving workplace projects because programme pressure has a habit of turning assumptions into decisions.
Once a contractor is appointed and the clock is running, there is naturally pressure to keep moving.
An independent commercial adviser gives the client someone whose role is not to protect the design or the delivery programme, but to help them understand what each decision means for the investment.
The smallest office is not necessarily the cheapest solution
This is also why I would be cautious about treating footprint reduction as an automatic saving.
A smaller office reduces rent and can reduce total fit-out expenditure, but the remaining space may need to work considerably harder.
Higher utilisation can require more intensive meeting-room provision, better acoustics, stronger AV infrastructure, more resilient MEP systems, better booking technology and greater flexibility.
The cost per square foot may therefore rise even as the total footprint falls.
Again, that may still be the right decision.
The point is that the commercial assessment should look at the total cost of providing a workplace that performs, rather than simply the amount of space being fitted out.
Final thought
I do not think the commercial response to uncertainty around office attendance is to wait until someone produces the perfect utilisation forecast or the perfect brief.
That probably is not going to happen.
The better approach is to acknowledge that uncertainty and build the investment strategy around it.
That means testing scenarios, understanding where flexibility genuinely adds value, separating expenditure that needs to happen now from expenditure that could sensibly happen later, and making sure the commercial consequence of every significant design decision remains visible.
For me, it also means retaining independent advice.
If the client’s brief is still evolving, going straight to a design and build contractor and asking them to define the solution, price it and deliver it can remove much of the transparency the client needs precisely when the greatest number of commercial decisions are still being made.
Design and build may ultimately be the right procurement route, but the client should understand the brief, budget, risks and commercial options before handing over that responsibility.
If flexibility is important in the real-estate strategy, then transparency and an auditable decision-making process are equally important in the capital strategy.
Because the question is not simply how many people will come into the office.
It is how much money the business should invest today when the answer may change tomorrow.
How we help
At EthosEQ, we help clients understand the cost implications of different workplace and investment scenarios before significant capital is committed.
That might involve testing alternative scopes, quantifying the cost of flexibility, comparing upfront investment with future Day 2 expenditure or providing independent commercial challenge as the design develops.
The aim is to make the impact of each decision visible, so the client can make an informed investment choice.
Links
Cost Certainty Report – Expert Cost Consultancy
Design & Build vs Traditional Procurement Explained
Design and build procurement route – Designing Buildings
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Disclaimer This article is provided for general information only and does not constitute cost, procurement, contractual, legal, workplace or investment advice. The appropriate investment and procurement strategy will depend on project-specific factors including scope, attendance assumptions, headcount, design maturity, programme, building constraints, market conditions and risk. Design and build can be an appropriate procurement route where properly structured and governed. Independent professional advice should be obtained before making material project, procurement or capital investment decisions.