Once you've decided a modular approach makes sense, who do you work with to deliver it? Here’s a guide to identifying and selecting a partner who will understand your specific requirements and realise them in a space that’s better than just fit for purpose.
Author: Alasdair Hood, Principal - Head of Design, Context Architects
Outline
- The appointment decision
- Three delivery models and how each allocates risk
- What you are actually buying: stages of service
- Credentials that can be independently verified
- How fee structure shapes design behaviour
- Seven questions that separate partners from suppliers
- How Context approaches workplace design for SMEs
- Practical next steps before you appoint
Key Takeaways
Choosing a workplace partner incorporates three decisions based on: which delivery model you use, what the scope of service you require will be, and where risk will be attributed should something go wrong. Ensure your potential partner can satisfy all of the basic requirements including competency and experience, resources to meet your programme, and insurance cover before you proceed any further.
- Choose the delivery model
- Design-and-build changes who your designer answers to
- Scope exclusions become costly – check what’s in the scope of service and what isn’t
- Insurance and references are all publicly verifiable
- Percentage-of-cost fees rise when your build cost rises
- Designers carry health and safety duties under HSWA
- Ask every shortlisted firm the identical written questions
Introduction
By this point you’ll know your expiry and notice dates, you’ll have modelled whole-of-lease cost rather than build price, and you’ll understand what a relocatable approach will and won’t deliver.
The next step is appointing a partner who will be able to bring your project to life.
Step one: choose the delivery model before you meet anyone
There are three routes commonly used for commercial fitout in New Zealand, and they allocate risk differently.
Design-led, or traditional. You engage the designer directly. The design is documented, then construction is tendered or negotiated. Your consultants are contractually responsible to you for the design, and the contractor's obligation is to deliver it. This offers design independence and competitive pricing on a defined scope, but cost certainty arrives later than in the alternatives.
Design and build. You hold a single contract with a contractor who appoints and manages the consultants. Fewer interfaces, earlier price certainty, one point of accountability. The trade-off is that the designer's duty runs to the contractor, not to you. That can cause a conflict of interest when a design decision and a cost decision are made without transparency.
Early contractor involvement. Similar to design-led or traditional, you engage the designer and consultants directly, but a contractor is brought on board early for buildability and pricing input before documentation is finished. This is a more collaborative and transparent approach than design and build but with the benefit of greater visibility over cost at an earlier stage.
Each has its pros and cons. For additional guidance the construction procurement guidelines are a useful, straight-forward reference.
Step two: understand what you are actually commissioning
Design fees are usually quoted against stages of service, and the standard New Zealand framework runs from predesign and concept design through preliminary and developed design, detailed design and documentation, contractor procurement, and finally to contract administration and on site observation.
For various reasons, including lack of clarity about your requirements, programme or some other variable, it can be common for a proposal to exclude some aspects of the design services. Understandably, the price may appear cheaper at face value but once exclusions are priced back into the service, that can change.
Verify with suppliers what is included and what isn’t. It’s OK to accept a price or service provided you know exactly what you’re getting and where additional costs may lie in the future.
Step three: verify what can be verified
Professional indemnity insurance. Ask for the limit and whether it suits a project of your value. Under design and build, ask specifically whose policy responds to a design failure, because contractor cover generally answers claims arising from professional services rather than construction workmanship.
Health and safety in design. Designers are upstream duty holders under section 39 of the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 and must, so far as is reasonably practicable, design structures without risks to health and safety. WorkSafe's health and safety by design guidelines set the benchmark.
References from comparable tenancies. Not the flagship project. A tenancy of your size, ideally delivered by the same individuals who’ll work on your project.
Step four: read the fee structure for incentives
When a fee is priced as a percentage-of-construction-cost, that fee will rise when your build cost rises. Although less common today, if proposed ensure you understand the implications before proceeding.
A fixed fee against a clearly defined scope makes variations visible, which is usually what an SME with a fixed budget and a hard lease date needs. Ask what triggers a variation, and for the hourly rates that apply when one does.
Finally, if you’re commissioning a test fit, check who’s paying for it and what happens to that work if you appoint someone else.
Six questions to ask during the selection process
- Which stages of service are included in your fee, and which are excluded?
- What is your professional indemnity limit?
- Who will be on the project team?
- How will you demonstrate the split between relocatable plant and fixed leasehold improvement?
- Which parts of your proposed design trigger a building consent, and why?
- What will you tell us we can’t have, and when will you tell us?
Ask these questions to each of the firms you’re considering so you’re able to clearly compare their offering.
How Context approaches this
Context Architects is a New Zealand multi-disciplinary architecture and design practice with more than twenty-one years of experience. It has studios in Auckland, Tauranga and Christchurch. Context Workplace is our offering for small and medium businesses facing a lease decision.
We offer a test fit service before you commit to a building. We’re thinking about and designing in relocatability from the first sketch rather than retrofitting it, and we evidence the classification split between freestanding items and fixed work so your accountant can assist with the tax determination. We treat the consenting pathway as our problem, which is why we publish our consenting process guide free to anyone.
We tested the approach on ourselves. Our Christchurch studio was designed so that almost 90% of the fitout can be relocated at lease end, limiting the built environment to a single constructed wall and using a proprietary wall system, cabinetry and furniture for the rest.
Common questions about choosing a fitout partner
Do you legally need a registered architect for an office fitout? No. Restricted building work rules apply to homes and small apartment buildings, not to commercial interiors. Registration is a verifiable standard, not a legal requirement here.
How many firms should you shortlist? Three is usually enough. Beyond that, each firm invests less in your brief and the comparison gets harder, not easier.
Should you appoint a designer or a design-and-build contractor? It depends on whether design independence or a single-point of accountability matters more. Each approach has its pros and cons.
Jump to the other blogs in this series here:
Part 1: Your Office Lease Is Expiring: A 12-Month Planning Guide for New Zealand SMEs - Context NZ
Part 2: The Real Cost of an Office Fitout: A CFO’s Guide to Whole-of-Lease Thinking
Part 5: After the Move: How to Make Your New Workplace Keep Paying Off - Context NZ
Next Steps
Identify the three things a workplace must do for your business before you issue a brief. Use that criteria to assess the responses you receive. If not already clear, use the six questions outlined above to further clarify suitability.
Our previous guide covered how to establish a credible modular approach [Internal link to Blog 3] Our next piece looks at what to measure in the first twelve months after you move in. [Internal link to Blog 5]
You can also browse our workplace projects or read more of our thinking in Context Insights.
How do I get started with Context Workplace?
Contact us today to discuss how Context Workplace can deliver a better outcome for your business: https://context.nz/contact/
About the Author:
Alasdair Hood, Principal - Head of Design, Context Architects
Alasdair Hood is a Design Principal at Context Architects, where he leads commercial workplace design across the practice's New Zealand studios. An award-winning designer, Alasdair has spent more than two decades helping organisations rethink how their physical space supports the way people actually work.
Alasdair specialises in translating a company's culture, headcount and growth plans into workplaces that are flexible, cost-efficient and built for change, drawing on Context's Adaptive Modular Design approach to reduce fitout cost, cut make-good liability and keep options open.
He writes regularly on the future of work and the evolving New Zealand workplace. Connect with Alasdair on LinkedIn, or explore Context Architects' workplace thinking through their Insights.