A 1,850m² Cat-B office fit-out across two floors of a Canary Wharf tower for a financial services firm relocating into a Grade A let — 14 meeting rooms with graded acoustic targets, glazed boardroom with motorised switchable privacy glass, executive offices, raised access flooring, full Cat-6A and fibre-to-desk structured cabling, secure server suite with biometric access and gaseous fire suppression, and acoustic dampening throughout. Eleven-week programme delivered against fixed price, with the trading floor live at 7am Monday of week twelve.
A long-established financial services firm with around 130 staff, relocating from a tired floor in another part of London into 1,850m² of Grade A space across two floors of a Canary Wharf tower. The new lease commenced on a fixed date; the firm's trading floor and client-facing teams were contractually committed to occupy on the Monday of week twelve. The landlord handed over the floors to Cat-A standard — raised access flooring, perimeter trunking, base building M&E to floor, suspended ceiling grid, but no internal partitions, no comms infrastructure, no AV. We had eleven weeks to turn it into a working office.
We were one of four contractors invited to tender. Our bid came in third on price by approximately £28,000 against the leading offer. We won the work because our methodology document was the only one to (a) cost the building's specific tenant fit-out protocols into the fixed price (out-of-hours noisy trades, service lift booking against other tenants, mandatory fire warden coordination, after-hours pass system for evening shifts), (b) propose graded acoustic targets across the 14 meeting rooms rather than a single Rw figure, and (c) include the secure server suite specification and commissioning — biometric access, redundant power, gaseous fire suppression, segregated network — inside the contract sum rather than flagging it as a likely variation against an "as required" line item.
The firm took occupancy at 7.00am on the Monday of week twelve. Their trading desks were operational, their phones were ringing, the boardroom switchable glass had been commissioned and demonstrated to the senior partner two days earlier, and their managing partner held the first board meeting in the new boardroom that Tuesday afternoon. Trading floor recorded zero downtime through the migration weekend.
The brief came from the firm's Chief Operating Officer, the IT Director and the Head of Facilities jointly. Priorities, in their stated order:
An 11-week Cat-B fit-out at 1,850m² across two floors of a Canary Wharf tower is achievable but unforgiving. Every constraint had a workaround that had to be planned before the keys were handed over.
The building has 22 active tenants across 30 floors and a building manager who runs the tenant fit-out process to a published handbook. Every contractor on a named pass system, every delivery booked into a service lift slot, every after-hours shift logged with the building security desk, mandatory fire warden coordination meetings every Friday morning. We onboarded all 38 named operatives in week 1, booked all major material lifts in 90-minute windows from week 2 onwards, and attended every Friday fire warden meeting for the duration of the project. Zero co-tenant complaints logged with the building manager.
Two floors meant two parallel M&E workstreams, two HVAC zone modifications, two fire alarm panel additions, two structured cabling environments, plus a new internal feature staircase between them. We ran the floors as parallel programmes with two M&E foremen and a single project manager owning the interface. Vertical service runs (data backbone, fibre uplinks between floors) were sequenced to land at week 6 once the staircase opening had been formed and certified.
The motorised switchable glass on the main boardroom uses laminated PDLC (polymer-dispersed liquid crystal) technology — clear when energised, opaque when off — with a wireless remote and a wall switch. Lead time on the bespoke 14m of glazing was nine weeks from order, placed week 1 with calibrated-frame measurements taken from the partition layout drawing rather than a site survey. Glass arrived week 10, installed Tuesday-Wednesday, electrical commissioning Thursday, demo to the COO Friday afternoon. No fitting tolerance failure.
Single-spec acoustic targets on a multi-purpose office floor are a missed opportunity. We specified five different acoustic Rw targets across the 14 meeting rooms based on use case: 38dB for general meeting rooms, 42dB for video-conferenced client rooms, 45dB for confidential deal rooms, 50dB for the boardroom, plus the open-plan trading floor at general acoustic comfort. Each room category had its own partition specification, glazing system, door specification and ceiling treatment. Independent acoustic testing on a representative sample at week 9 confirmed all five targets achieved or exceeded.
Financial services data infrastructure is a significantly more demanding workstream than a standard comms room. The server suite specification included: biometric access control (fingerprint + PIN), N+1 split-system cooling at 12kW capacity, 8kW UPS-backed server load with backup generator feed, gaseous (NOVEC 1230) fire suppression with cross-zoned smoke detection, network segregation via separate cable-tray runs and air-gapped patch panels for trading versus corporate networks. Commissioned at week 10, running for one week before live migration, zero faults logged in commissioning.
Tower-building protocols restrict noisy and dusty trades to the hours 18:00-23:00 Monday-Friday and 08:00-18:00 weekends. We costed in 22 evening shifts and four full weekend days into the fixed price from the bid, plus a final IT migration weekend (Saturday and Sunday of week 11) when the firm's IT team migrated their server estate, file shares and trading platforms from the previous building. Our role on migration weekend: keeping the building accessible, the server suite cooling running, the sprinklers commissioned, and the cabling certified and patched. Firm's IT director reported zero packet loss during migration.
Major commercial fit-outs in managed tower buildings succeed or fail on coordination — with the building manager, with co-tenants, with multiple parallel trades, with the tenant's IT migration team. Our entire approach was built around four governance disciplines and one technical discipline.
Building manager protocols owned end-to-end. The two competing tenders that came closest to ours treated the tower's tenant fit-out handbook as something to read and largely follow. We treated it as a parallel project. A named team member owned the building relationship: pass administration, lift booking, fire warden meetings, security desk liaison, evening shift logging. Forty-three lift bookings, twenty-two evening shifts, zero co-tenant complaints, zero building manager escalations. Predictable from week one onwards.
Two floors, parallel programmes, single PM. Two-floor fit-outs fail when each floor becomes a project of its own and the interface gets lost. We ran the floors as parallel workstreams with two M&E foremen, two partition leads and one shared project manager owning the interface. Daily 07:30 standups covered both floors. Vertical service runs (data backbone, fibre uplinks) sequenced explicitly against the staircase opening certification, not against either floor's individual programme.
Acoustic graded by room, not by spec sheet. Stockport Commercial Fit-Out (our previous large fit-out at this scale) used a single acoustic target across all glazed pods. Canary Wharf needed five different targets across 14 rooms. The partition spec, glazing thickness, door bottom seal and ceiling treatment varied by room type. Independent acoustic test at week 9 measured five categories across a six-room sample: every category at or above target, the boardroom 51dB against a 50dB contract spec.
IT segregated as a workstream, dovetailed with the firm's migration. Structured cabling, fibre to desk, the comms cabinet and the server suite ran as a parallel workstream with their own foreman and their own programme. By week 9 the server suite was live and tested. By week 10 every trading-floor cable was certified and patched. The firm's IT migration over the Saturday-Sunday of week 11 ran on certified cabling, a commissioned server suite and a building we had on continuous attendance. The IT director's brief: "we wanted boring." Boring is what we delivered.
Seventy-seven working days from key handover to occupancy. Two parallel-floor programmes sequenced against a Sunday-night IT migration completion and a 7am Monday occupancy on day 78.
Pass-system onboarding for all 38 named operatives. Service lift booking template agreed with the building manager. First Friday fire warden meeting attended. Detailed Cat-A survey of both floors: floor box positions, ceiling void depth, fire alarm grid coverage, sprinkler grid coverage, structural penetrations available for the new feature staircase. Partition layout marked out on raised access flooring on both floors. Switchable glass order placed (9-week lead time). Server suite specification finalised.
Metal stud framing for all partitions on both floors, two layers of 12.5mm acoustic plasterboard each side. Higher-spec partitions to deal rooms and boardroom (30mm Rockwool RW3 core upgrade). Cable tray containment installed in ceiling void on both floors. First evening shifts on day 8 for slab fixings and structural penetrations — logged with building security, fire warden notified.
Parallel first-fix workstreams on both floors. Electrical: small power, lighting circuits, dedicated server suite sub-circuit, switchable glass control wiring. HVAC modifications: VRF indoor unit positions adjusted across both floors. Cat-6A F/UTP runs to all 96 trading workstations from each floor's IDF; fibre-to-desk supplementary runs to 32 trading positions. 10Gb fibre uplink between IDFs prepared.
Plasterboard taped, jointed, sanded and prepared for paint on both floors. Aluminium glazed pod frames erected for all 14 meeting rooms across both floors, doors hung, ready for glazing. Acoustic ceiling rafts (Ecophon Solo Square at three height levels) suspended in open-plan areas of both floors for tonal distribution and reverberation control.
12.7mm laminated glass installed to the 13 standard meeting rooms (boardroom held for week 10 switchable-glass install). Acoustic seals fitted to door head, jambs and bottom on each room. Second-fix electrical: switchplates, sockets, light fittings. Comms cabinets built on both floors, switches and patch panels installed, fibre terminated. Independent acoustician first walkthrough Friday, partition-complete sign-off.
Structural opening for the feature staircase between floors formed and certified. Bespoke open-tread feature staircase fabricated off-site delivered Tuesday and installed Wednesday-Thursday. Two coats of paint to all walls and exposed ceiling areas across both floors. Carpet tiles laid across open-plan trading floor, LVT to executive office floor and reception. Independent third-party Cat-6A channel certification: 188 channels tested across both floors, 188 passed at first measurement.
Server suite construction: biometric access control installed and commissioned, N+1 split-system cooling tested at full load, UPS commissioned and load-tested at 8kW for 24 hours, NOVEC 1230 gaseous fire suppression installed by specialist contractor and commissioned. AV pre-install across the six video-conferenced rooms: ceiling microphones, dual-screen displays, room-booking integration set up. Vertical fibre uplinks between floors energised and tested.
Furniture installed across both floors: 96 trading workstations on the lower floor with dual 32-inch monitor arms, height-adjustable desks; 8 executive offices furnished on the upper floor. Meeting room tables and chairs installed in 13 rooms (boardroom held for switchable-glass install). Fire risk assessor walk-around: revised compartmentation confirmed, smoke and heat detection extended to every new room, fire alarm panel additions tested. Compliance report logged.
Independent acoustician on site Tuesday-Thursday for a six-room sample test across the five acoustic categories. Results: standard meeting rooms 39-40dB (target 38), client rooms 43dB (target 42), deal rooms 46-47dB (target 45), training room 39dB (target 38), boardroom partition pre-glass 51dB (target 50). Acoustic test report bound and delivered to the COO. First-pass snagging walkthrough Friday afternoon.
Bespoke switchable PDLC glass delivered Tuesday morning. Installation Tuesday-Wednesday. Electrical commissioning Thursday: wireless remote, wall switch and integration into the room-booking system tested. Demo to COO Friday afternoon. Server suite running in commissioned state for the full week with continuous monitoring; zero faults logged. Snag round 1 items closed: 31 of 38 cleared.
Final snag round Tuesday: 7 remaining items closed by Wednesday. Final fire alarm commissioning. Final acoustic test on the boardroom with switchable glass installed: 50dB measured (target 50). Friday afternoon: keys, project file, O&M manuals, certification reports, acoustic test reports, biometric access logs and the building manager's tenant compliance file all handed over. Saturday-Sunday: firm's IT migration weekend with us on continuous attendance. Trading floor live at 7am Monday of week twelve.
The technical detail behind a Cat-B fit-out built for trading-floor uptime, regulatory data security and a building manager's tenant compliance file.
92mm metal stud, two layers 12.5mm acoustic plasterboard each side. Standard partition Rw 50dB (general meeting rooms). Upgraded partition with 100mm Rockwool RW3 core Rw 55dB (deal rooms, boardroom). All partitions taken to slab via cellular ceiling void to maintain acoustic seal.
Bespoke 14m of laminated PDLC switchable glass to the boardroom. Clear when energised, opaque when off. Wireless remote control plus wall switch, integrated into the room-booking system. Boardroom partition + glass measured Rw 50dB post-install. 9-week supplier lead time.
Aluminium-framed glazed pod system, 12.7mm laminated low-iron glass on 13 rooms. Acoustic seals at head, jambs and door bottom. Tested Rw 39-47dB across categories: general 38-40, video 42-43, deal 45-47.
Ecophon Solo Square acoustic rafts suspended at three height levels (2.7m, 2.55m, 2.4m) for tonal distribution. 42% absorption coverage of ceiling area in open-plan trading and reception zones. Reverberation time T60 below 0.5s in trading floor (target < 0.6s).
Cat-6A F/UTP shielded across 188 channels (96 trading workstations + meeting rooms). Fibre-to-desk supplementary runs to 32 trading positions. 10Gb fibre uplink between floor IDFs and to server suite. Channel certified to ANSI/TIA-568.2-D by independent third-party tester at week 6: 188/188 first-time pass.
Climate-controlled server suite: 32A dedicated sub-circuit, 8kW UPS-backed server load with backup generator feed, N+1 split-system cooling at 12kW capacity, biometric access control (fingerprint + PIN), gaseous NOVEC 1230 fire suppression cross-zoned with smoke detection. Air-gapped network segregation between trading and corporate networks.
Revised fire compartmentation per fire risk assessment across both floors. Smoke and heat detection extended to every new pod, office and the server suite. New compartmentation walls fire-rated FD30 with intumescent strips. Server suite gaseous suppression separately commissioned. Fire warden coordination with building managed throughout.
Bespoke open-tread feature staircase between the two floors, set within the central core of the lower-floor reception. Hardwood treads, powder-coated steel stringers, toughened glass balustrade panels. Structural opening certified by Building Control before staircase install.
A 1,850m² Cat-B office fit-out across two floors of a Canary Wharf tower delivered against an 11-week fixed-price contract with no variation orders, no co-tenant complaints, no co-tenant escalations to the building manager, every one of 188 Cat-6A channels certified at first measurement, every one of five graded acoustic categories at or above contracted target, the server suite commissioned a full week before live migration, and the trading floor live at 7am Monday of week twelve. The firm's COO held the first board meeting in the new boardroom on the Tuesday afternoon. The switchable glass switched at the end of the meeting in front of a senior client, who, according to the COO's later message, said the room reminded him of a similar boardroom in Geneva.
The building manager logged us as the highest-compliance fit-out contractor of the calendar quarter on the basis of zero pass violations, zero lift booking failures and zero fire warden meeting non-attendances. The firm's IT director recorded zero packet loss across the migration weekend. Three months after handover, the server suite remains at 100% uptime since commissioning. The Stockport Commercial Fit-Out we delivered earlier in the year was the larger version of a methodical fit-out for a regional accountancy firm; this one was the same methodology applied at a different scale, in a more demanding environment, for a tenant who needed boring above all else.
We are a regulated financial services firm with a fixed lease commencement date and a trading floor that cannot go offline. We tendered four contractors. Building Group came in third on price by twenty-eight thousand pounds. We chose them because their methodology document was the only one to cost the building's tenant fit-out protocols into the fixed price, the only one to propose graded acoustic targets across the fourteen meeting rooms instead of a single number, and the only one to specify the secure server suite inside the contract sum rather than as a likely variation. The cheaper bids would have hit us with both of those as variation orders within the first month. Eleven weeks later the trading floor went live at seven on the Monday morning. The boardroom switchable glass was demonstrated to a senior client on the Tuesday and the client compared it to a boardroom in Geneva. The IT migration weekend was the smoothest we have ever run. We would use them again, and we have already recommended them to two of our peer firms.
If you're relocating into a Grade A let, refitting an existing floor, or fitting out across multiple floors of a managed tower building, we'll come out for a free site visit, walk the existing space with your COO, IT director and facilities lead, and put a fixed-price methodology document on your desk — with the tower-building protocols, graded acoustic targets, and IT and security specifications all costed in.
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