Special thanks to tipster Dennis Latta, Construction Manager responsible for all activity at The Pyramid Center, for sharing some insight regarding LED light fixture energy consumption. In a previous post, I indicated how it was wasteful that the new Energy Code (Title 24) requires a replacement of fixtures when at least 10% are being modified.

Dennis and the Management Team at The Pyramid Center compared the 20 year life cycle costs between conventional style T8 florescent tube fixtures and LED fixtures for a 10,000 square foot office suite.

The findings were that when factoring in initial material and labor, energy consumption, and lifetime maintenance costs, the LED fixtures were the winners by edging the T8 fixtures by about $100,000 which is slightly less than 1/2 of the costs. This savings comes at a mere front cost of just than $1 / square foot in materials.

I’m interested to hear the feedback of others based on this information…

In today’s commercial real estate market, demand is off the charts which makes it difficult for tenants to find affordable office space. When a tenant first engages with a broker to begin a search for new space, one of the first questions asked is how much space is needed.

As a tenant, you might not need as space as your think you do.  It’s a wise idea to conduct a detailed programming exercise before spending too much time touring office space. You may not be priced out of that Class-A building next near public transit that you were dreaming of.

There is a good chance that your current office space was built out at least 5 or 10 years ago, plus the improvements you are in may have been a partial reuse of the existing conditions from the previous tenant. The bottom line is, in the last decade or so, there have been some innovative trends in doing more with less. Therefore, just because you are moving the same 20 people to the new office, doesn’t mean you need an office that is the same size as your current space.

There are several areas you can explore to reduce your footprint:

1. Private Offices

Private offices take up lots of space and many companies have been moving toward open office plans. It is worthwhile to consider who REALLY needs an office. There are often business reasons for C-Level Managers, HR personnel, and attorneys to be in enclosed private offices; but what about others? Is your business operation conducive to a shared office approach as a compromise to switching some individuals to open office environments?

2. Open Office Area

Once you have determined who can live without their own office, consider creative ways to be efficient with the staff setting arrangements in the open area. Gone are the days of the tall 8-foot by 8-foot cubicles farms. Today’s workstation designs have much lower partitions between themselves and are often only large enough to provide room for a computer and basic storage. The smaller workstations create a more collaborative environment and encourage a move towards a paperless environment by not providing extra space to store clutter. One concept for maxing out open office space is known as benching, a means of clustering employees along a long conference table-shaped workstation.

Many offices compensate for the smaller personal space by adding small person conference rooms for private calls or meetings and by providing other common areas for interaction. This design technique can actually help employees be more focused when they are at their desk because they won’t be distracted by sounding conversations.

Finally, consider having some or all or your open office area desks as unassigned seating. This concept, known as hotelling, can actually allow you to have less workstations than employees. Many companies are rarely at a full head count most days because of corporate travel, working from home arrangements, or absent workers. While this is certainly not the best approach for all companies, it can be a major money saving system for some.

3. Rethink Your Reception Area

How often frequently do you host guests and visitors? If not very often, look for ways to reduce the seating in your reception area. Your office may want to consider are shared receptionist approach in which several employees sitting closest to the door focus on their regular job and alternate duties of receiving deliveries and guests. This may allow you to virtually eliminate a reception area altogether.

4. Downsize the Boardroom

On a per square foot basis for most companies, large, often vacant conference rooms are the number one must expensive region of the office. Considering how infrequently many large conference rooms get used, it is wise to seek ways to reduce the size of these rooms early in the space planning process.

If it fits within your how your company operates, a conference room that serves more than one purpose provides a better use of space. Some offices forgo dining and lounge areas and use their conference room as the sole place to congregate.

Alternatively, some conference rooms are built intentionally small and have walls opening up to the open office area. Using flexible, modular furniture, you can accommodate that quarterly board meeting that would have required the larger conference room.

5. Open Up Your Kitchen and Production Rooms

A typical enclosed room needs four walls, and a door that requires opening clearance. If your operations can accommodate it, consider an open “coffee bar” style kitchen that is along a single wall that is out of the way of the view of guests or quite areas. By creating all the functions of a standard kitchen into a linear form, square footage can be reduced and space needed for door swings are eliminated.

The same is true with production rooms. If your office can tolerate the noise and view of an open production room, you may save significant rentable space.

While all of the above concepts are not going to be suitable for every office user, they should be considered not just early in design, but at the time of evaluating your square footage needs. Proper evaluation of your square footage needs will ensure you aren’t leasing more space than you truly need.

I’ve spent much of my background overseeing commercial interiors on behalf of landlords and have run into many situations where a tenant is planning their project with little to no desire to communicate to Building Management, which thus ends up tripping them up at some point. If your business is planning a tenant improvement project in your leased premises, it behooves you to keep the following in mind:

1. Initiate contact with your Landlord before starting your design process

Imagine beginning elaborate plans for a huge new server room that will require massive electrical and HVAC that can’t actually be accommodated at the building. The last thing you want to do is spin your wheels and pay to develop a design that has a conflict you aren’t aware of. By sitting down early with your Landlord or Building Management and explaining your project goals, you will not only avoid developing designs that are incompatible for the building, but you may learn what has worked well in the building on other projects.

2. Review the lease terms as they relate to tenant improvements with Building Management early

 In many cases the lease transaction dealmakers are not the same individuals executing tenant improvements or overseeing the work from the Landlord’s side of the table. Set expectations on requirements and timelines before too much time in the project passes.

3. Ask for a list of preferred vendors as soon as possible

Aside from the fact that working with the building’s preferred vendors gives the Building Management team a great level of comfort, partnering with these vendors gives you an edge in working with experienced teams who know the property inside and out. In the event a project schedule must be significantly expedited, the use of vendors intimate with the property often results in quick, high-quality responses. Additionally, these vendors usually already have a great rapport with the Building Engineers, which can really go a long way.

4. Don’t wait until you have your final set of drawings to submit to the Landlord

 It is incredibly foolish to not give your Building Management a “sneak peek” at your design by submitting a progress set (often referred to as Design Development drawings). On a typical build-out, I recommend sharing the Space Plan and Design Development set with the Building Management to get continuous feedback before it is too late. Your team will want to avoid having to spend time redesigning if the Landlord has special requirements or comments that are not shared until the final Construction Drawings are reviewed.

5. Welcome the Building Management team to attend construction meetings

In my experience as a Project Manager representing building ownerships, there were times that I felt very unwanted at tenant construction meetings. Tenants would be intimated by my presence, feeling like I was being too much of a watchdog, and I wasn’t always informed of key meetings. The more transparent tenants are with their project, the more the building management teams will trust them and the smoother the project will run.

The relationship with you as the tenant and your Landlord truly starts not on the first day of occupancy, but the moment you sign your lease and start planning your build-out. Keeping the lines of communication opens with your Landlord will ensure a healthy rapport.

People often discount how important the end of the project really is. A project may seem like it is running smooth, but I try not to get too excited until the project team has delivered a quality build-out with all the key punchlist items completed by the date everyone expected. Here are some tips to make your next punch list process a knockout.

1. Waiting until the last day in the schedule is too late.

Waiting until the end of the schedule only means that most crews are onto their next job and getting them back will take too long. I try to encourage contractors to start their own internal pre-punchlist to keep their subs on the job until they have fixed what needs to be corrected. This is especially critical for subs whose work scope ends well before the end of the project. I have also seen some general contractors bring in an assistant superintendent towards the later part of a project to begin such an internal list and to focus on getting work completed before the “official” punchlist.

2. A punchlist is not a party.

They fewer the attendees, the quicker and more efficient it will run. I can’t tell you how many of these walks I have attended where too many people show up and they end up distracting the group with their irrelevant conversations. Ideally, just invite the architect, contractor, and owner’s representative.

3. Don’t go crazy with the blue tape.

Often times project teams will plaster what seems like the entire premises in rolls of blue tape to highlight every single flaw and issue. I suggest using the punchlist document as the main tracking tool and placing blue tape only in places where the area of concern may not be easy to find.

4. Have the punchlist published ASAP to all key parties and give them a chance to check it for accuracy.

It needs to be a priority for the tracker of the punchlist (often the architect) to publish their list quickly so the process can move ahead. That said, a contractor who sits on his hands until he gets his list is lazy. The contractor should be taking high-level notes during the punchlist walk and making arrangements to complete deficiencies immediately.

Earlier this year, tenant improvement construction in the Golden State adopted the California Energy Commission’s 2013 Title 24 Energy Code – a game changer that as a community we are all going to need some time to get fully accustomed to.

One of the biggest changes from the previous Title 24 version mandates that if a new tenant improvement’s design makes modifications to over 10% of the light fixtures in an area within an office space, ALL of the light fixtures in that area must be replaced with new, energy efficient, LED fixtures.

The reality is, there are many more tenant improvement projects that attempt to reuse existing ceiling and lighting systems compared to projects that enjoy starting from a clean slate of a shell-condition premises. Is the new code attempting to discourage too much modification to an existing space, or is it pushing to have all of the fixtures replaced?

How environmentally responsible is it to send countless light fixtures to landfills that in many cases function properly, have years of useful life left, and may be what was the previous standard for energy efficiency last year?

While I certainly applaud the California Energy Commission for setting their goals high, I think they will result in too many relatively efficient fixtures being unnecessarily disposed of – and while LED fixtures save energy, dumping perfectly good fixtures in our landfills is a bit unsettling.