Owner/Director Cogent Associates
Cogent Director Anthony McCarthy launches our guide to Retrofitting and Refurbishing Commercial Offices.
If this is your first project, or you already have an understanding of the process of retrofitting and refurbishment, this guide is intended to save time and money while you embark on transforming your office and addressing your business needs.
In our experience, the size of the property, the scope of work and the budget available will generally determine how long it will take to plan, design, construct and complete the works.
At the outset, you will need to assemble an experienced retrofit team and choose key decision makers from within your organisation. These individuals will represent various departments such as – facilities, management, finance, IT, marketing, HR etc.
Clients will also need to choose a project leader who can support you in selecting the right project team. An experienced project manager will help manage the project and ensure everything runs smoothly and stays on programme and budget. The project manager will also help to identify the project objectives and works requirements, by asking the right questions.
Depending on the size of the organisation, we recommend a business case is prepared to inform the project and prioritise the work requirements.
An experienced project manager will also manage the procurement and selection of the project team. This process varies from client to client and can range from professional recommendations to a longer pre-qualification, RFP, evaluation and award process.
Taking the time to choose the right team and procurement strategy, which addresses the specifics of your retrofit project, will save time and money in the months ahead. It is also very beneficial to implement surveys of the existing property early in the design process to ensure that the design team are working with accurate, as-built information.
It is also important to prepare a robust budget for the works. We recommend appointing a chartered quantity surveyor to advise on construction costs, inflation and commercial risk.
There are many factors that contribute to refurbishment costs and the range of costs shown in our Retrofitting Guide are indicative for light touch, medium intervention, and complete retrofitting.
The project manager will prepare a master programme and create a list of key deliverables and milestone dates. For larger and more complex projects, we recommend that a more detailed project execution plan is prepared. Preconstruction programmes can vary from 6 to 18 months and construction durations can vary from 6 to 24 months.
Clients will also need to consider whether they can remain in their office during the works or if they need to find temporary accommodation. This process needs careful consideration and planning.
When the detailed design is complete, the team will procure the fit out contractor and special subcontractors and the appointed team will commence work on site. During this time the project manager will represent the client and oversee the project to ensure the works have been carried out to a high standard and in accordance with the building contract, programme and budget.
Our guide below, is designed to present you with outline scope of works, a range of retrofitting costs and the types of issues you will encounter when deciding to retrofit an existing office building.
Cogent Director Anthony McCarthy at this morning’s Bisnow Real Estate Outlook at EPIC Galleria.
Anthony was joined by fellow industry experts, offering insights into investment and development trends, and launching Cogent’s guide to Retrofitting Commercial Buildings.
Plenty of food for thought and interesting discussion around ESG, retrofitting buildings and factors affecting investment decisions. Great to hear different perspectives and predictions.
Cogent Associates’ Anthony McCarthy joined the retrofitting discussion on RTÉ Radio 1 this morning, discussing the challenges facing the industry in retrofitting Ireland’s housing stock and reaching the 2030 target of retrofitting 500,000 homes.
Listen back RTE Radio 1, 2nd November 2021 – Retrofitting
For more on retrofitting, read our Retrofitting blog, the first in our Housing for All Blog Series, where we dig deeper into the Housing for All plan; looking at different areas of it, identifying some challenges and proffering some solutions.
Tags: Retrofitting, Housing for AllOver the course of the coming weeks, we will be delving deeper into the Housing for All plan, exploring how this well intended strategy to solve a nationwide housing crisis will be delivered – or if it will be deliverable at all.
Fundamentally, we admire the plan’s ambition. We believe the timing is right and are keen to see how it will evolve to overcome the many challenges it faces. We also believe that patience will be required as progress will be slow – so much so that it may fall, at best, up to 5,000 houses short of the average annual target for the first few years, as the legislation and incentives are put in place and the industry mobilises.
Given the impacts of Covid-19, the skills shortages and materials sourcing challenges alone, it is a remarkable achievement that the industry is on target to deliver c. 22,000 completions in 2021 (according to the BPFI), noting this is 10% higher than the previous year. Based on this evidence, it’s not hard to see that ground will be made-up over successive years of the plan, especially if it is managed correctly, with period reviews to evaluate progress and address any issues that are hindering progress.
The retrofitting programme, which is an important link in the chain, is a perfect example of the challenges that lie between the strategy and its execution. It’s a fine statement of intent: 300,000 houses by 2030, but as a means to providing residential homes, quickly, retrofitting appears to provide the quickest win, as these properties are in towns and villages across the country, where services and infrastructure (i.e. utilities, amenities and transport) are already in place.
It is also a very sustainable way to provide housing – as we are repurposing rather than building from scratch, so significantly less whole life embodied carbon is emitted. What’s more, retrofitting supports the objectives of the 15 Minute City and the Government’s Town’s First initiative, where places of work, education and social needs are all local to place of residence. An aspiration that has recently become even easier to achieve with the post-Covid hybrid working model, seeing more people working from home.
Based on the figures committed to in the plan and support from the EU recovery fund, the financial resources may, for once, not be the biggest issue in executing the retrofitting plan but, instead, putting in place the administrative systems and incentives required to deliver what tend to be more complex projects.
The reality is that many of these buildings are old and quite often protected structures, which were never designed with modern Building Regulations, fire and disability access requirements in mind, so need to be brought into the 21st century. However, due to their nature, the actual scope of the project will only be fully known when the opening up works begin.
Health and safety issues arise, as most properties are adjacent to occupied properties and although services may be running to these properties, those services will need to be inspected and in some instances replaced to comply with current regulations. Not to mention the potential planning issues that may arise. The government has suggested that change of use retrofit projects may be exempt from planning, but we can’t foresee this being extended to protected structures.
For the retrofitting plan to work, what we really need is easy access to guidance, resources and the funding.
Significant incentives will be required to encourage individuals to view retrofitting as an attractive and viable proposition and the 35% grants that SEAI are offering are not incentive enough to renovate properties, requiring significant levels of upgrading. It may be time to consider a whole different approach that sees the prospective owner as the solution to bringing our dilapidated, vacant properties back to modern, energy efficient housing stock, much like Italy’s incentive scheme.
Begun in Sicily in May 2020, as part of Italy’s economic recovery programme, Italy’s ‘One Euro House’ scheme saw derelict houses offered for €1. With reasonable conditions such as a nominal deposit and a requirement to commence work quickly once the building permit has been issued, it would appear that this scheme has proved to be very popular.
Similarly, the Italian ‘Super Ecobonus’ scheme effectively pays homeowners to make their home more energy efficient by funding 110% of the renovation costs through fiscal credits. By the end of March 2021, over 10,000 constructions worth €1 billion were in progress or successfully completed thanks to the new schemes. Residential building renovations are now up by over 500% since the Super Ecobonus was introduced, with the scheme hailed as a welcome boost to economic activity by the Italian building sector.
On the face of it, 110% may appear overly generous, but if a similar plan was coupled with the reintroduction of local authority commercial charges for vacant properties and the introduction of the Vacant Property Tax, it may be enough to unlock those vacant town centre properties, that would be more cost effective than building from scratch.
The fact is that upgrading the country’s housing stock is an extremely efficient and sustainable way of helping to meet our housing targets, but the bottom line is, the success of it is down to incentivising people to do it.
Tags: Blog Series, Retrofitting, Housing for All