Any type of renovation or improvement needs to be carefully considered and planned out before the work can be done or you may find yourself doing work that doesn’t exactly fit your current or future needs. We want to keep you from living a nightmare and doing work that doesn’t need to be done or not doing something that you should.

Here are 5 steps for effectively planning your commercial renovations or tenant improvements:

Identify All Your Goals

As mentioned above, you should know exactly what you need before you do any type of work. There are a few questions that you can ask yourself to assist with this process including:

• What issues do I need this renovation or improvement to solve?
• What is my current budget?
• Who will I need to work with to accomplish my goals?
• What new technologies can I incorporate into the renovations and improvements?

Get a Team Together

No one person can do all the work on any project, which is why you will need to get a team together. A designer, contractor, and numerous subcontractors including an electrician will make up the team of people that you choose. Most of the subcontractors will do the work that they specialize in, so that all those jobs are done correctly. After all, you are not going to want an electrician hanging drywall or a drywall expert running wires.

Create a Plan

Everyone needs a plan when they are working on a project and you may need to do some research in order to determine any issues that you may face as the work is being completed. If you can figure out the answers to any questions that you may have before you need them, the work will continue faster than if you need to stop and do the research later. This is also the time to determine how old all the mechanical and electrical systems are and the qualities of the existing utilities.

Create a Schedule that is Realistic

You may want all the renovations and improvements done in a few days, but that isn’t a realistic expectation. Instead, we urge you to create a schedule that gets the work done in a timely manner, while also scheduling in additional time for little issues that may pop up along the way. You may want to allow extra time in the schedule too for the additional electrical work that may need to be done, especially if you are installing or updating surveillance cameras.

Prepare Two Budgets

We always say that everyone needs two different budgets, which is why we always tell people to take a portion of their original budget and set it aside. That smaller budget can then be used to pay for any issues that arise during the work.

Your commercial renovations and tenant improvements will go much more smoothly if you follow these five steps before you begin the work. It may seem like a lot of work in the beginning, but you will be happy with all the time you save later on.