Fitting out a shop or office is a real opportunity to communicate your brand and culture to the people who work there and those who come to visit. It has a real impact on their experience of being in the space, whether they want to keep coming back and how comfortable and productive they feel when they’re there. It will also impact on how efficiently it allows you to run your business and what impact that has on the environment.

When going ‘green’ can help achieve any and all of the following…

• Reduced costs through increased energy efficiency
• Improved productivity, wellbeing and health of employees
• Reduced carbon emissions and environmental footprint
• Improved customer experience and sales volumes
• Engagement with staff, clients and stakeholders

…you have to ask why isn’t it happening everywhere, all the time?

The answer is often a lack of time, resource, knowledge and communication between all the different parties involved throughout the fit-out and refurbishment process.

The right people, asking the right questions, at the right time, could make all the difference to achieving the most sustainable outcome when it comes to fit-out. And the solutions will be different for retail as from office, for big projects as from small, for short term lets as from long term leases, for flagship headquarters as from regional outposts.

The BBP has just started working, in collaboration with Faithful + Gould, the British Property Federation and British Retail Consortium, on a Sustainable Fit-Out Guide that is designed to equip all the various parties involved in fit-out with the knowledge to ask those right questions and when is the best time to do it. We’ll be identifying the barriers to achieving more sustainable solutions and providing case studies examples of where those barriers have been overcome, and how.

If you are an owner, occupier, leasing agent, designer or contractor involved in the fit-out process, and you have an example of a project where your attempts to achieve a sustainable outcome have been particularly successful – or stymied! – please let us know. We’re looking for input and involvement from those across the industry to ensure the toolkit is as practical and useful as possible. I look forward to updating you on our progress over the coming months.