Office fit-out in White City W12
New and newly converted media and knowledge-economy space, where most floors arrive as a Cat A shell and the whole job is Cat B.
What you are fitting out in White City
Regeneration stock: converted broadcast buildings, new commercial floors delivered alongside the retail and residential development, and research and innovation space attached to the university campus. Much of it is recent, which changes the problem — you are not fighting an old building, you are fitting out an empty one to a landlord's tight specification.
Media production, technology, research spin-outs and the businesses that cluster around them. Briefs skew towards flexible space, collaboration areas and heavy services provision rather than cellular offices.
The constraint that sets the programme
Better than anywhere else on this list — most buildings were designed with service access and have proper loading and lifts. The constraint moves to coordination instead: multiple contractors working the same core on adjacent floors, so booking, waste segregation and out-of-hours noise limits are managed by the building rather than negotiated by you.
Who decides, and what needs consent
Hammersmith & Fulham again, so the borough-wide Article 4 on basements applies. On new stock the binding document is usually not planning but the landlord's fit-out guide and the licence to alter — read both before designing, because they routinely restrict floor build-ups, penetrations and anything fixed to the structure.
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 White City
- Full Cat B fit-out of a shell-and-core or Cat A floor
- Reception and collaboration joinery from our own workshop
- Seamless resin floors specified to a RAL reference across a large open plan
- Acoustic strategy for production and meeting space
- Coordination with the landlord's fit-out guide and building management
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.
What is the difference between Cat A and Cat B on a White City floor?
Cat A is what the landlord hands you: a finished shell with raised floor, suspended ceiling, basic lighting and services distributed to the floor, but no walls, no rooms and nothing that says who you are. Cat B is everything after that — the layout, the joinery, the finishes, the meeting rooms, the reception. On new stock in W12 you are almost always taking a Cat A floor, which means the entire fit-out is Cat B and the landlord's guide governs what you are allowed to fix to.
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 White City space.
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