Building Refurbishment.

Commercial Building Refurbishment in Sydney: What the Scope Actually Covers

A commercial building refurbishment is not a fitout with extra paint. A fitout dresses a tenancy; a refurbishment changes the building itself — its services capacity, its compliance baseline, its lettable quality and often its structure. At Liteco Projects we run refurbishment work across Sydney for owners, asset managers, strata committees and long-lease tenants, from Surry Hills warehouse conversions to 1980s office towers in North Sydney that need to compete with new stock across the street.

The distinction matters commercially because refurbishment is where budgets quietly blow up. A tenant fitout is priced from a known base building. A refurbishment is priced from a base building whose drawings may be thirty years old and wrong. Our answer is a structured scope definition before a single trade is engaged: what exists, what must be replaced, what can be retained, and what the building code will demand the moment we touch a given element.

Refurbishment versus make good versus fitout

• Fitout — new internal works inside an existing shell: partitions, ceilings, joinery, finishes, lighting, power, HVAC distribution. The base building is left alone.
• Make good — returning a tenancy to the condition required by the lease: removing tenant additions, patching, repainting, reinstating the base building ceiling grid and services. Scope is defined by the lease, not by design ambition.
• Refurbishment — upgrading the base building or a whole floor plate: new mechanical plant, switchboard replacement, lift modernisation, façade remediation, structural alterations, amenity upgrades (end-of-trip, lobbies, bathrooms), and compliance catch-up.

Most projects we see are hybrids. A tenant takes a floor, and the landlord refurbishes the core while the tenant fitout proceeds in parallel. Getting the interface right — who pays for the riser upgrade, who owns the new FCU, who signs off the fire upgrade — is where a project manager earns their fee.

The seven phases we run on every refurbishment

1. Condition audit and due diligence. Measured survey, services investigation, destructive opening where needed, hazardous materials register (asbestos in pre-1990 buildings), and a review of existing approvals and occupation certificates.
2. Scope and feasibility. Test the brief against the building’s real capacity: power available at the switchboard, cooling capacity at the riser, floor loading, ceiling void depth, lift capacity, and egress widths.
3. Design and documentation. Architectural, structural, mechanical, electrical, hydraulic, fire and accessibility documentation coordinated to construction issue.
4. Approvals. Development application or complying development certificate through the local council or a private certifier, plus separate fire safety and trade waste consents where triggered.
5. Procurement. Trade packages tendered or negotiated, long-lead plant ordered early (switchgear, chillers, lifts and imported joinery all run 8–20 weeks).
6. Construction. Sequenced so that structure and services rough-in precede ceilings, and ceilings precede finishes. Staged handover where the building stays occupied.
7. Commissioning and handover. Services commissioning, fire integrity checks, as-built drawings, operation and maintenance manuals, warranty register, and defects liability management.

When refurbishing beats relocating

We are often asked to price both. Refurbishment usually wins when the building’s bones are sound: the floor plate works, the structure has capacity, and the services are at end of life rather than fundamentally undersized. It loses when the constraint is structural or regulatory — a floor-to-floor height that cannot take a modern ceiling and services zone, an egress stair that cannot be widened, or a site with no capacity for additional parking or loading.

Because we both design and construct, we can give that comparison early with real numbers rather than a placeholder rate per square metre. If refurbishment is the right call, the same team carries it through documentation, approval and delivery without a re-tender. Compare our design and construct service and our interior fitout service if you are still deciding which model fits your asset.

Services Upgrades: The Part of a Refurbishment That Decides the Budget

In almost every Sydney refurbishment we cost, the services carry 45–65% of the contract value. Finishes are visible and easy to price; switchboards, risers and fire systems are not. This is the section of the scope we interrogate hardest, because a base building that has absorbed thirty years of ad-hoc tenant connections rarely has spare capacity where the new brief needs it.

Mechanical and ventilation

Replacing or extending air conditioning means reconciling the new load with the existing plant and the riser. We survey duct sizes and available static pressure before promising a zoning arrangement, and we check whether the existing rooftop plant has physical space and structural capacity for a replacement of equivalent or greater duty. Ventilation rates and outdoor air provisions are set by the National Construction Code and AS 1668.2, and any change of use — a warehouse becoming a gym, an office becoming a childcare centre — changes the required rates entirely. Kitchen exhaust is a separate discipline again: a hospitality tenancy needs make-up air balanced against the hood extract, or the space will not draft correctly no matter how good the cooking equipment is.

Electrical

Board capacity is the single most common constraint on a refurbishment. Older buildings frequently have no spare ways, no spare capacity and no arc fault or surge protection to current expectations. A switchboard upgrade is not a variation you want discovered during construction, because it involves a supply authority outage, metering changes and often a new main switch room. We audit maximum demand against the proposed load schedule early, and we plan the changeover so that occupied floors keep power.

Hydraulic and fire

New amenities, tea points, kitchens and end-of-trip facilities all load the hydraulic system, and additional fixtures can trigger a upgrade of the sanitary drainage and stormwater connections. On the fire side, any reconfiguration of egress, ceilings or compartmentation touches the essential services regime: sprinkler coverage, detection zoning, hydrant and hose reel access, exit signage and emergency lighting. Works must leave the building’s annual fire safety statement defensible, not just pass a visual inspection. We coordinate fire engineering input where a performance solution is needed rather than a deemed-to-satisfy answer.

Accessibility and compliance catch-up

Refurbishment is the moment accessibility gets tested. The Premises Standards and AS 1428.1 govern door clearances, circulation, amenities, signage, luminance contrast and accessible paths of travel. A refurbished lobby that gains a new reception desk but keeps a 15 mm trip lip at the entry has not solved the problem. Where full compliance is impractical, we document the concession properly rather than pretending the issue does not exist.

Structural and envelope work

Removing a wall, cutting a slab penetration for a new riser, adding a plant platform or opening a façade all require structural assessment and often a certificate from a structural engineer. Heritage items and contributory buildings in conservation areas add a consent layer: we have run refurbishments in Sydney where every new opening and every change to a shopfront was assessed against a heritage management document, and the programme had to absorb that.

Cost levers that actually move the number

• Retain the ceiling grid where the services zone allows it — this alone can remove six figures from a floor plate.
• Re-use the primary plant if the condition audit supports it, and spend the saving on controls and zoning instead.
• Stage the works by floor rather than emptying the building; revenue retained usually outweighs the premium for staging.
• Fix the brief early. Refurbishment variations are expensive because they disturb completed services zones, not because trades are slow.
• Order long-lead items before practical completion of design — switchgear and lifts are the usual critical path.

Typical refurbishment programmes for a single floor plate run 10–16 weeks on site; multi-floor or plant-replacement projects run 20–40 weeks. We publish a programme with the tender so the cash flow is visible from the start.

Refurbishing an Occupied Building: Sequencing, Risk and Handover

Most Sydney refurbishments happen in buildings that are still earning rent. That single fact reshapes the whole delivery method. Noise, dust, egress, fire isolation, lift availability and after-hours access all become design constraints, not site-management afterthoughts. We plan an occupied refurbishment around four disciplines.

1. Separation before demolition

Every work area gets a physical and fire separation boundary: hoarding, negative-pressure dust control, temporary detection where the permanent system is isolated, and a clear path of travel maintained for occupants at all times. Isolating a sprinkler zone without a documented interim measure is how projects lose their fire safety statement.

2. Noise and out-of-hours programming

Core drilling, demolition and any impact work are scheduled outside occupant hours or in agreed windows, with the building manager notified in writing. We prefer a published look-ahead that residents and tenants can see, because complaints fall away when people know what is happening and when it will stop.

3. Vertical logistics

Lifts are the bottleneck. We book lift usage, protect car interiors, and where the lift is too small for plant or joinery, we plan crane or hoist access and the associated council permits and road occupancy approvals well in advance. Material deliveries in the Sydney CBD and inner ring also need loading zone bookings.

4. Staged handover

Floors or zones are completed, commissioned and handed over progressively, so the asset starts producing earlier and defects are found while the team is still mobilised. Each stage closes out with its own as-built mark-up, O&M updates and fire documentation.

Frequently asked questions

Do we need a development application for a refurbishment?

Not always. Internal works that do not change use, floor area, or the building envelope are often exempt or complying development. Changes of use, new shopfronts, façade alterations, heritage items and additional floor area usually require a DA. We assess this at feasibility and can lodge either pathway.

How long does a refurbishment take?

Design and approval typically take 8–16 weeks depending on council and heritage involvement. Construction on a single floor runs 10–16 weeks; multi-floor and plant replacement 20–40 weeks. Long-lead plant is usually the true critical path.

Can the building stay open during works?

Yes, and we structure the contract for it — staging, out-of-hours work, temporary services and a documented separation strategy. It costs more than an empty building, but far less than lost rent.

What about asbestos?

Buildings constructed or renovated before the late 1980s must be assumed to contain asbestos until a register or sampling says otherwise. We engage a licensed assessor, and removal is done by a licensed contractor with clearance certificates before any affected area is reoccupied.

Who certifies the finished work?

A private certifier or council issues the construction certificate and occupation certificate, and the fire safety schedule is updated to reflect the new essential services. We hand over the complete package: as-builts, commissioning data, warranties and the updated fire documentation.

How is a refurbishment priced?

We price from measured scope with trade packages broken out, so the owner can see what each element costs and make informed deletions. Provisional sums are identified as such rather than buried in a lump sum.

Talk to us about your building

If you are weighing up a refurbishment against relocation, or you have a floor plate that has stopped competing, send us the address and any existing drawings. We will tell you honestly what the building can and cannot support, and what it will cost to bring it to a standard the market will pay for. See our office fitout and hospitality fitout experience, or contact the Sydney team to arrange a site walk.