Britain is falling back in love with the office, just not necessarily with building new ones.
Seven in ten office schemes due for delivery over the next four years will be refurbishments, according to figures recently reported by Specification Online. Planning approvals for office projects also rose 107% year-on-year in the second quarter of 2026.
It makes sense. Developers are under pressure to make better use of the buildings we already have, while employers want offices that are greener, more efficient and somewhere people actually want to spend their working week.
The result is a lot of new workplaces being fitted into buildings designed for a very different working world. And sometimes, quite literally fitted.
A meeting pod may look perfectly fine on a floorplan, it looks different when somebody figures out it won’t fit in the lift.
Refurbishing a building that isn’t empty
That isn’t the only issue. Many refurbishments happen while part of the building is in use.
Employees could be working three floors above the contractors, loading bays may be shared with other tenants, lifts still need to carry people as well as furniture and materials.
It’s a problem that exists beyond offices, too. Residential buildings are quite frequently being upgraded and refurbished while tenants continue living inside them.
A spokesperson at J Property Management, a London letting agency, says the disruption caused by building work can be huge.
“When you’re looking at a refurbishment on paper, it’s easy to focus on the end result. But if people are still living or working in the building, the question becomes how you get there without making the place impossible to use in the meantime.
“Deliveries, contractors, access, noise and shared areas all need thinking about. Good planning isn’t only about getting the work finished on time; it’s about what happens in the building while that work is going on.”
What happens when 200 desks arrive early?
Julian Wogman of office relocation agents, Pilcher London says: “An office fit-out can involve hundreds of desks and chairs, meeting booths, screens, storage and reception furniture, often coming from several different manufacturers.”
“Then the construction programme slips. A supplier might have 200 desks ready to send on Monday, but the floor they’re destined for won’t now be finished until Friday, and while the manufacturer wants them gone, the contractor doesn’t want them on site either.”
“Sending them anyway can leave trades working around piles of furniture and increases the chance of something being damaged before the office has even opened. Multiply that across multiple suppliers and floors and a relatively small delay becomes a much bigger headache.”
“That’s why delivery needs to enter the refurbishment conversation earlier than it sometimes does.”
On bigger projects, furniture and equipment can be stored away from the building and delivered only when areas are actually ready.
A spokesperson for SFI, which manages FF&E logistics and installation for office fit-out and refurbishment projects, said: “The part people often miss is that furniture doesn’t have to leave the warehouse the moment it’s built. If a floor isn’t ready, there’s no reason to force 200 desks onto a site where they’ll only get in the way.
“It sounds like a small thing until a programme slips and you’ve got contractors working round furniture nobody can use yet. Getting the sequencing right can be the difference between a fit-out that finishes cleanly and one where the last fortnight turns into a scramble.”
If one floor falls behind, everything destined for it doesn’t have to turn up anyway.
Some problems can’t be fixed with better scheduling
Then there are the physical limitations of the building itself.
Older offices weren’t designed around today’s workplace. We are asking them to hold acoustic meeting pods, big collaborative spaces, more technology and furniture than would ever have been thought about just 30 years ago.
A big reception desk still has to get through the entrance, and a meeting booth has to fit in the lift or be assembled upstairs. Heavy or oversized furniture has to navigate corridors, stairs and doorways before anyone gets to enjoy how good it looks in the finished space.
None of this means architects need to become logistics experts.
But with refurbishment expected to account for 70% of office schemes coming through over the next four years, there is a case for thinking about the practical elements of the journey earlier.
What needs to come out before work starts? Where does it go in the meantime, and when can new furniture arrive?
These aren’t the most exciting questions on a refurbishment project, but they can quickly become some of the most expensive when nobody asks them.
After all, designing the perfect office is one thing, getting it through the door is another.
