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The better you plan, the easier the move – top tips for running a super fit-out and relocation. By Zoe Mellor
I realised when I took up my role as the new Practice Operations Director of Hardwicke (now Gatehouse) Chambers during the lockdown in 2020 that one of the main responsibilities for which I was being recruited was to see through the move of chambers operations from the building it had occupied for the last 30 years in Lincoln’s Inn at the expiry of its lease, to a newly refurbished building in Gray’s Inn.
However, what I hadn’t quite appreciated was that this extensive premises project had been planned for many years before my arrival. It soon became clear that it had occupied an intensive period of management and planning time by the senior team before I came on board.
I could see why. The better you plan, the easier the move. For at least five years before the move, CEO Amanda Illing, Finance Director Gavin Sturge, and the Chambers Management Committee had led Chambers’ finances and managed annual budgets to lessen the financial impact and to give Chambers more options over future expenditure for a super building fit-out (pictured, right).
As it happens, this strategy also had the unintended consequence of mitigating the impact of the effects of the pandemic in the early part of 2020.
Two years before the planned move, we undertook a space planning exercise with a consultant. This included pre-COVID heat maps of how we were using barrister rooms, staff space and client space. During lockdown we ran a rooms questionnaire. Although a few people changed their preferences on room requirements, we were surprised that most barristers still wanted rooms and to share office space, and expressed a desire to create more areas for social networking and collaboration.
Several months on from the move, I can now just about look at this project from the other end of the kaleidoscope. Here are my 10 top tips:
Good luck!
I realised when I took up my role as the new Practice Operations Director of Hardwicke (now Gatehouse) Chambers during the lockdown in 2020 that one of the main responsibilities for which I was being recruited was to see through the move of chambers operations from the building it had occupied for the last 30 years in Lincoln’s Inn at the expiry of its lease, to a newly refurbished building in Gray’s Inn.
However, what I hadn’t quite appreciated was that this extensive premises project had been planned for many years before my arrival. It soon became clear that it had occupied an intensive period of management and planning time by the senior team before I came on board.
I could see why. The better you plan, the easier the move. For at least five years before the move, CEO Amanda Illing, Finance Director Gavin Sturge, and the Chambers Management Committee had led Chambers’ finances and managed annual budgets to lessen the financial impact and to give Chambers more options over future expenditure for a super building fit-out (pictured, right).
As it happens, this strategy also had the unintended consequence of mitigating the impact of the effects of the pandemic in the early part of 2020.
Two years before the planned move, we undertook a space planning exercise with a consultant. This included pre-COVID heat maps of how we were using barrister rooms, staff space and client space. During lockdown we ran a rooms questionnaire. Although a few people changed their preferences on room requirements, we were surprised that most barristers still wanted rooms and to share office space, and expressed a desire to create more areas for social networking and collaboration.
Several months on from the move, I can now just about look at this project from the other end of the kaleidoscope. Here are my 10 top tips:
Good luck!
The better you plan, the easier the move – top tips for running a super fit-out and relocation. By Zoe Mellor
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