02 Fit-outs in a unit that is still open

A fit-out in an empty shell is a sequencing job. A fit-out in a unit that has to keep taking money is a possession job with a fit-out inside it. The second is what this team is set up for.

The difference is that nothing can be left in a state. At the end of every shift the area has to be either sealed behind a screen or clean, lit, safe and open to the public. That one rule decides how the work is broken up, what plant stays on site overnight and why the last hour of a shift is always a clean rather than a trade.

02.1 Taking one area at a time

The unit is divided into areas on the survey drawing, and the order they are taken in is agreed with you before anything is priced, because the order changes the programme more than the specification does. A till area taken first means a temporary counter; a stockroom taken first means stock lives somewhere else for a fortnight.

1. Survey and area split

   We walk the unit with you, mark the areas and the screen lines on the drawing, and write down the trading hours, the delivery times and the fire routes as they actually work rather than as the lease describes them.

2. Protection in, first area taken

   Screen line up, floor protection down, the route to the service door taped out. The area comes out of trading and the rest of the unit carries on with its own door and its own exit.

3. Work, clean, hand back

   The area is stripped, built, serviced and finished, then cleaned and walked with you against a snag list. It goes back into trading before the next area is opened.

4. Move the screen, repeat

   The screen line moves to the next line on the drawing. Nothing is opened up until the previous area has been signed off, so at no point is more than one area out of use.

02.2 The screen line and what gets through it

The screen is a sheeted stud hoarding where it has to take a knock, and a double-skin polythene screen on a floor-to-soffit track where it only has to hold dust. Either way it is taped at the floor, taped at the soffit and fitted with one zip door, and the zip door is the only opening. A screen with two ways through it is a corridor, and a corridor leaks dust.

Through the zip door go people and hand tools. Everything else — sheet material, waste, plant, long lengths — goes through the service door out of hours, because carrying an eight-foot board across a shop floor at two in the afternoon is how glass gets broken and how a customer gets hurt. Cutting is done outside or on extraction. Where the screen crosses a fire route, the route is re-signed and the new way out is walked with your staff the same day.

02.3 Out-of-hours shifts and who locks up

Most fit-out work in an occupied unit happens in the hour before opening and the hours after closing. Which of those two is bigger decides everything, so it is worked out first — the possession planner on the opening page does the division we do on paper.

On an out-of-hours shift one of our people holds the key and signs in and out against your log, or your own duty manager stays and we work to their hours. We say which it is before the first shift, in writing, and we do not change it mid-job. Alarm codes, if we hold them, are held by one named person and are changed by you when we finish. Shutters, tills and alarm panels that have to stay live overnight are listed before the first isolation is taken.

02.4 Dust and noise, written as a specification

Dust and noise are where fit-outs go wrong with a landlord, with the neighbours and with your own staff. They are also the easiest part to agree in advance, because the measures are a short list and each one either applies or does not.

Tick the measures the premises needs and they are written out below under their own headings. The button then opens an email to the yard with that list in it, so the enquiry arrives as a specification we can price and method rather than a paragraph we have to interpret.

02.5 Giving an area back

Handback is a walk-round, not an email. We meet you in the area with the drawing and a snag list, switch the lights and the sockets on in front of you, open and close the doors, and write down anything you point at. The snags are cleared before the area goes back into use, and the list is signed off when the last one is done.

What you get with the area: the test sheets for anything electrical done in it, the fire-stopping photographs, the paint and floor references so a scuff can be touched in later, and the waste transfer notes for what left the building. Keys and codes we held are handed back the same day and we ask you to change them.

Then the screen moves and the next area opens. Nothing on the programme moves forward until the area behind it is closed out.