Articles
Notes from the job site
What we have learned running renovations, build-outs and furniture installs: costs, schedules, contracts and the details that decide opening day.
Select-Service Hotel Renovation (Example)
This is an example project, not a finished job. It shows the shape of the hotel work we take on so this page is not empty on day one. Replace it with a real pr…
Read the article →Retail tenant build-outs: finishing a leased space by the opening date
The landlord's representative unlocked a bay in a center that had been open nine years. Inside was a bare floor, one demising wall that stopped a foot short of…
Read the article →Multifamily interiors: unit finish packages, turns and amenity spaces
The property manager handed us a spreadsheet with forty-eight units on it and a column of dates that did not move. Fourteen were vacant that week. The rest cam…
Read the article →Picking a general contractor in Houston: what to ask first
The proposal in your inbox gives you a number and a start date. It does not tell you who will be standing in the parking lot at six in the morning when the con…
Read the article →Hotel renovation: from the model room to the first reopened floor
The first room we finish on a hotel renovation isn't for a guest. It's the model room, and the general manager, the brand's quality inspector and our superinte…
Read the article →Office build-outs and TI work, planned around your move-in date
The lease says rent starts on the first of the month. The furniture truck is booked for the week before. Somewhere between those two dates, the ceiling grid ha…
Read the article →Office build-outs inside warehouses and industrial buildings
A tenant walks the warehouse floor, points at four hundred feet of open concrete along the front wall and says the offices, the break room and the restrooms go…
Read the article →Dental and medical office build-outs: planning the space right
The first question we ask a dentist or a physician is not about the finishes. It is when the first patient is scheduled. That date sets the schedule backward…
Read the article →Building a restaurant: what to know before the lease clock starts
The day a restaurant lease is signed, the opening date is already fixed and the money starts running against it. Rent abatement has an end date. Staff have bee…
Read the article →Hotel and apartment renovations while the property stays open
At seven in the morning on an occupied hotel floor, the first thing we check is not the drywall. It is the hallway: is the plastic wall up, is the carpet runne…
Read the article →Reading a commercial construction bid line by line
Lay three bids side by side and the eye goes straight to the totals. We have sat on the owner's side of that table, and the totals are the least useful thing o…
Read the article →Keeping a commercial build on the date: what actually works
The schedule that gets printed at kickoff and pinned to the trailer wall is not the schedule that opens the building. The one that opens the building is the th…
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