Running a defit at the old office and a new fitout at the new office at the same time is the reality for most Sydney tenants who are relocating. Lease overlap costs money whether you use it or not, so the pressure to start the new fitout before the old tenancy is fully handed back is constant. The tenants who manage this well are not the ones who work faster. They are the ones who treat the two projects as a single programme with shared dependencies, shared decision points, and a single critical path. The tenants who manage it badly treat them as two separate jobs, and the result is duplicated cost, conflicting timelines, and decisions made on one side that create problems on the other.
This article covers the operational challenge of managing a defit and new fitout simultaneously, where the programme risks sit, and how to keep both projects moving without one undermining the other.
Why Two Projects Running at Once Is Not Twice as Hard – It Is Harder
The difficulty of running simultaneous projects is not additive. It is multiplicative, because the projects share resources, decisions, and constraints that create dependencies between them. The project manager’s attention is split. The budget is shared. The furniture and equipment that the business needs exist in one location and are required in another. The IT infrastructure needs to be decommissioned at the old site and commissioned at the new site in a sequence that maintains business continuity throughout.
Coordinating two offices means every decision on one project needs to be checked against the other. Bringing the defit forward to save time may conflict with the furniture reuse plan. Accelerating the new fitout may require additional temporary provisions at the old site to maintain operations while staff are relocated in phases. The complexity is in the interactions between the projects, not in the projects themselves, and the interactions multiply as both projects progress and their timelines begin to converge on the move date.
The Timeline Problem: How Defit Delays Transfer to the New Fitout
The single biggest programme risk in a simultaneous defit and fitout is that a delay on the defit side transfers pressure to the new fitout side, even though the two projects may be in different buildings managed by different teams. The mechanism is the move date. The move date is the fixed point that both projects work towards and backwards from. If the defit runs late, the tenant may need to extend occupation of the old site, which delays the move, which delays occupation of the new site, which may trigger holdover provisions in the new lease if the space is not occupied by the agreed date.
The reverse also applies. If the new fitout runs late and the tenant cannot move on schedule, the old office remains occupied beyond the planned vacate date, which compresses the defit programme into less time than it needs. Staff who were supposed to have moved are still using the space, which prevents demolition from starting and further delays the handback. Starting the planning process early enough to build realistic float into both programmes is the most effective way to prevent this cascade, because once the cascade starts, every day of delay on either side costs money on both.
Where Costs Double When Projects Are Managed Separately
When the defit and the new fitout are managed by different parties with different contracts and different timelines, certain costs are incurred twice. Temporary power provisions at the old site may duplicate what is being installed at the new site. IT disconnection and reconnection may be quoted separately by different contractors who are unaware of each other’s scope. Project management fees are charged on both sides. Waste removal, after-hours access, and building management coordination are each negotiated independently rather than bundled.
These duplications are not always visible in the individual quotes because each contractor is quoting their own scope in isolation. They become visible in the total spend, which consistently exceeds the sum of the two original budgets on projects where the two streams are not coordinated. The overrun is not from any single large item but from dozens of small duplications that individually seem insignificant but collectively represent a substantial waste of budget. The savings from coordination are not theoretical. They are the direct result of eliminating double-handling, aligning shared resources, and making decisions once rather than twice. Even simple coordination, such as scheduling the same IT contractor to decommission at the old site and commission at the new site in a single mobilisation, reduces cost in ways that separate management cannot achieve.
What Can Be Reused and When the Decision Must Be Made
Furniture, partitions, fixtures, and equipment that are removed during the defit may be reusable in the new fitout. Demountable glass partitions, workstation systems, storage units, and AV equipment are the most common candidates. The value of reuse is significant, both financially and in terms of programme, because procuring new items that could have been salvaged wastes budget and adds lead time.
The reuse decision needs to be made before either project is committed, not discovered during demolition. Once the defit contractor begins strip-out, items that could have been salvaged may be damaged or discarded. The new fitout designer needs to know what is available from the old office before specifying replacements. Storage and transport between sites need to be planned and costed. All of these dependencies require the two projects to be in conversation from the start, which does not happen automatically when they are managed separately.
How Building Access Rules Create Bottlenecks Across Both Sites
Both the old building and the new building have their own access rules, noise restrictions, goods lift schedules, and waste removal protocols. In Sydney, these rules are strictly enforced and often limit construction activity to specific hours, specific access points, and specific booking windows that fill quickly.
When both projects are running simultaneously, the combined access requirements can create bottlenecks that neither project would face individually. The same trades who are needed at the old site for demolition may be needed at the new site for installation. The same project manager who is coordinating with building management at one site needs to be coordinating with building management at the other. Planning the relocation as a single coordinated programme means these resource conflicts are identified and resolved in the scheduling phase, not discovered on the day when a trade turns up at one site and is needed at the other.
The Case for a Single Programme Across Both Projects
The most effective way to manage a simultaneous defit and fitout is to run them under a single programme with a single critical path, a single set of milestones, and a single point of accountability. This does not mean the same contractor has to do both jobs, although that can simplify coordination. It means someone is responsible for the whole move, not just their portion of it, and that decisions on one side are made with visibility of the impact on the other.
A single programme allows the move date to be protected by managing float across both projects rather than within each one independently. If the defit gains a week, that week can be used to absorb a delay on the new fitout side. If the new fitout is ahead of schedule, the move can be brought forward, which shortens the lease overlap and saves rent. These programme-level decisions are only possible when both projects are visible on the same timeline and managed by someone who can make trade-offs across the whole move.
When Separate Providers Work and When They Do Not
Not every tenant needs a single provider for defit and new fitout. Some tenants have existing relationships, internal project management capability, or contractual structures that require separate providers. This can work well when the two providers are coordinated under a shared programme with clear interface points, agreed milestones, and a defined escalation path for conflicts.
It works badly when the two providers operate independently, each focused on their own contract, their own programme, and their own definition of complete. In that scenario, the gaps between the two scopes are where the problems live: the furniture that nobody planned to move, the IT cut-over that nobody scheduled, the building management booking that nobody made. These gaps are not failures of either provider. They are failures of coordination, and they are the responsibility of whoever is managing the overall move, whether that is the tenant, a project manager, or one of the providers with a broader brief. The decision about provider structure should be made with this coordination requirement in mind, not just on the basis of which quote is cheapest for each individual scope.
We deliver defit and make-good and new office fitouts in Sydney, either as a coordinated package or as standalone scopes with fitout-level planning. If you are managing a move that involves both and want to avoid the coordination failures that inflate cost and delay timelines, we can help.
📞 Call us on 1300 60 93 93