The question almost always comes later: after visiting a few sites, after receiving a quote, after picturing the new layout. But the choice between refitting the current offices and moving carries implications – for cost, operational continuity, future adaptability – that are far more efficient to address beforehand. Space is a lever: but first you need to understand whether that lever is the right one.
Measuring the space you already have
The starting point is a data-driven reading of the current offices. The BOMA standard defines the usable net area – the one the tenant actually occupies – and makes it possible to calculate the building's real efficiency: how much space is structurally unusable, how much is taken up by mandatory corridors, how much is left for the work settings. A floor that looks spacious on paper can turn out to be inefficient once the support areas are subtracted. It is a calculation that reveals the real potential, before any decision.
Understanding what is really needed: the survey before the choice
Redesigning the spaces without knowing how the team works means risking optimising what exists without enabling the necessary change. Through interviews and surveys we reconstruct the typical day of each working group: how many hours are spent at the office, with what mix of concentration and collaboration, how many people overlap at the same times. Those needs – expressed and latent – become the functional brief: the data that says whether the current offices can accommodate them or whether the building's configuration structurally rules them out. The survey is the first step towards no longer deciding on instinct.
The criteria for deciding
The choice between staying and moving comes down to three measurable axes. The first is spatial efficiency: the BOMA analysis says whether the contracted m² are truly usable for the working model you want to enable, or whether the building's configuration prevents it. The second is total cost: renovating the current offices means working on an occupied space and bearing the implicit costs of disruption; relocating has its own – the move, fitting out the new space, search time. The comparison must be made over a horizon of at least five years. The third is operational continuity: a team that works with intense on-site presence tolerates works less; a team with high flexibility over its days can keep working during the works. The same space can have different outcomes depending on who works there and how.
A schematic example reading: each project weighs the three axes differently. Filled dots indicate a qualitative intensity.
In both scenarios, refitting in place or relocating, who manages the works matters. ARCHIlabs follows them with a consolidated multidisciplinary team – architects, mechanical and electrical engineers, urban planners – that also covers works supervision, art direction and final testing: design and delivery stay within the same studio, from analysis to handover.
And for a production facility?
The choice between refitting in place and relocating also applies to a company with production, where systems, logistics and work continuity carry weight. It is often the opportunity to rethink offices and production together, see Integrated offices and production.