Strategic Facility Planning is a method of evaluating not just how to occupy the built environment, but where, when, and why.

Smart business leaders understand that real estate is not an empty shell but a live asset. A company’s built environment can support or hinder business operations; positively and negatively affect employee happiness, health, productivity, and retention; and reinforce or weaken brand and corporate culture.  After HR, facilities are often a company’s largest expense.

Commercial tenant improvement lifecycles typically run a minimum of 18 months, from identifying potential properties, evaluating options, negotiating a lease or buy, assembling the design team, designing and documenting the project, bidding, awarding the construction contract, constructing the project, commissioning, and completing the move.  

Businesses often underestimate the amount of time and complexity of steps involved, or they skip steps and leave value on the table.  For example, many companies fail to effectively evaluate the condition of a building for lease.  This leads to a weak position during negotiation of the lease terms and the tenant left holding the bag for costs associated with improvements to the shell and core that should be borne by the building owner.

In our experience, even when there is a facilities department and facilities managers on staff, most companies simply don’t have the right expertise in house to maximize value at each step of the tenant improvement process; let alone evaluate the impact of the built environment on business operations, employee productivity, and corporate culture.

Unless your company is over $250M in annual revenue, you are probably too small to have the kind of expertise on staff you need to successfully deal with workplace strategy and facility planning. And if you are over $5M in annual revenue you need probably it.