Workplace Strategy & Space Planning

What we deliver

Test fits, space planning and workplace strategy — the work that happens before design, and that determines whether the office you build actually suits how your people work.

Our founder wrote the first book on workplace strategy, which is a fair signal of how seriously we treat this stage. It is also the cheapest place on a project to change your mind: moving a cabin on a test fit costs nothing, moving it after the ceiling has closed costs a fortnight.

Scope of works

Stage	What we deliver
Brief	Headcount, growth plan, working patterns, meeting culture
Floor assessment	Core position, column grid, usable carpet area, daylight
Test fit	Two or three layout options against real headcount
Density study	Seats per carpet area, circulation widths, support ratios
Compliance check	Occupant load, exits and travel distance to NBC 2016 Pt 4
Adjacency planning	Team placement, noise zoning, meeting room distribution
Output	Agreed layout that design and costing both work from

The numbers that actually govern

Consideration	Why it constrains the plan
Carpet area	The only real denominator — never chargeable area
Circulation width	Main routes and escape widths are code-driven, not stylistic
Occupant load	More people means more exit width under NBC 2016 Pt 4
Meeting room ratio	Usually the first thing that is under-provided
Cabin count	Drives partition, ceiling, sprinkler and HVAC cost
Daylight depth	Deep floor plates need lighting strategy, which hits ECBC

Where projects go wrong

• Planning headcount from the leased area. Chargeable area overstates capacity by the whole loading factor — often 25-40%.
• Test fit skipped before lease signing. The most expensive avoidable mistake in the whole process.
• Under-providing meeting rooms. The complaint that surfaces first in every post-occupancy review.
• Adding cabins after the layout is costed. Each one carries ceiling, sprinkler, diffuser and lighting rework behind it.
• Ignoring the compliance consequence of density. Occupant load, exit width and travel distance all move as the plan gets denser.

Why Hagerstone

Planning tied to delivery. We plan floors we then build, so a layout is never proposed that quietly costs a fortune in MEP rework — the team that has to reroute the sprinkler is in the room when the cabin is drawn.

Single-partner execution through to handover, on a 60-day delivery model with a 5-year warranty.

Standards referenced

Occupant load, exit width and travel distance under NBC 2016, Part 4. Lighting power density under ECBC 2017.