A fit-out runs on somebody else's building.
Your shell, your services and your permit all belong to the landlord and the authorities. What decides your opening date is rarely the factory lead — it is the base-build survey, the fit-out permit and the fire sign-off. We plan the job around those, not around a calendar.
How a fit-out runs
Seven stages. The detailed method sits behind them, and it is handed over by a person rather than published — because a third of its steps depend on answers your landlord and the fire officer have not given yet.
- 01
Stage A · Brief & base-build survey
Headcount, zoning and what the landlord's shell actually provides.
- 02
Stage B · Approvals
Landlord consent, fit-out permit and fire submission — before anything is ordered.
- 03
Stage C · Freeze & order
Shopfront, partitions, furniture and cabling on order the same day.
- 04
Stage D · Base-build works
Strip-out, service tie-ins and anything touching the landlord's systems.
- 05
Stage E · Fit-out
Partitions, ceiling, finishes, joinery and the furniture package.
- 06
Stage F · Commissioning & compliance
Fire sign-off, systems tested, and the certificate the tenant cannot open without.
- 07
Stage G · Handover & reinstatement record
As-builts, warranties, and the record of what must come out at lease end.
Who does what
ELS
Designs and specifies the space, surveys the base build against the lease, prepares the landlord and fire submissions, and coordinates every trade to one sequence. ELS holds no prices: the figure is the supplier's, after measurement.
ALUMAX
Supplies and installs the shopfront, the aluminium and glass, the joinery and the office furniture package — and quotes them, project by project, once the scope is specified.
Your landlord
Owns the shell, the risers and the common areas, grants the fit-out permit, and holds the bond against reinstatement at lease end. What you may change, and what must come out again, is theirs to define — and we record it at the brief, not at handover.
Example outputs
Design studies from completed commercial work. They show what a specified space looks like — not a product you can order from this page, and not a price.
The fit-out brief
The full method — every stage broken into its steps, what gates what, and which items must be ordered on the day the drawings freeze. We go through it with you against your actual unit, because that is the only version of it that is true.