Office fit-out in Chiswick W4
A campus market and a high-street market in the same postcode, with completely different rules for getting on site.
What you are fitting out in Chiswick
A large managed business campus at one end and period buildings along Chiswick High Road at the other. Two different worlds: one with estate management, security passes and a published fit-out guide, one with a shared front door and a neighbour above.
Media, pharmaceutical and professional services on the campus; independent practices, studios and agencies on the high street. Campus briefs come with a landlord's specification to work to; high-street briefs come with a building that has to keep functioning.
The constraint that sets the programme
On the campus, contractor induction, permit-to-work and delivery booking are mandatory and the estate publishes its own fit-out guide that overrides assumptions — allow for the induction in the programme, not as an afterthought. On the high street it is the opposite problem: a red route in places, restricted loading windows, and no compound to store anything, so deliveries have to be sequenced to the day they are used.
Who decides, and what needs consent
LB Hounslow is the authority here, not Hammersmith & Fulham — which catches out occupiers who have moved from one side of the bridge to the other. Chiswick High Road and much of the surrounding area sit in conservation areas, and shopfront or signage alterations are the part of a fit-out that most often needs consent.
A fit-out normally answers to three separate things: your landlord’s licence to alter, building regulations where services or fire strategy change, and planning only where the outside of the building or its use changes. They run on different clocks and the licence is the one most often discovered late.
What we are usually asked for in Chiswick
- Cat B fit-out to a landlord's campus specification
- High-street office refurbishment in an occupied period building
- Bespoke joinery — reception, storage, tea points — from our own workshop
- Seamless floors over existing substrates where the waste route is the constraint
- Dilapidations and reinstatement at lease end
Partitions, joinery and glazing come from our own companies rather than a chain of subcontractors, which is why the timing and the warranty stay in one place. The low-waste method — refinishing over what is already there — is what makes most of this workable in an occupied building.
Does a Chiswick campus fit-out work differently from a high-street one?
Completely, and the difference is administrative rather than technical. A campus building comes with an estate fit-out guide, contractor inductions, permits to work and booked delivery slots, all of which take programme time before a tool is lifted. A high-street building has none of that and a much harder physical access problem instead. The specification might be identical; the programme never is.
A floor area cannot price a fit-out.
We walk the floor, look at what is already there and what can be kept, and tell you what the access regime does to the programme. Free, and it is the only honest way to put a number on Chiswick space.
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