A Sydney commercial office lease ends on the day the lease document says it ends, and the tenant is expected to hand the premises back in the condition the lease requires. For an office manager coordinating the exit, the problem is not what make good means in the abstract. It is what needs to happen in which month, who owns each task, and when to escalate. Treating the last year of the lease as a sequenced project, rather than a rush in the final six weeks, is the single biggest lever the office manager has on cost and stress at exit.
This is not an obligations explainer. It is a working checklist structured around the twelve months leading up to handover, with the office manager as the point person. Each stage assumes the lease terms have been read, the sponsor is engaged, and the business has decided to exit rather than renew. If any of those is still open, the checklist stays in planning mode until they close.
What This Checklist Is For And What Is Not
The checklist covers the office manager’s coordination task, which is distinct from the legal task of interpreting the lease, the commercial task of negotiating make-good scope with the landlord, and the delivery task of physically executing defit and reinstatement. Those three jobs are done by other people, ideally people the office manager has brought into the process in the right month.
What the office manager owns is the programme: knowing what needs to happen next, who is doing it, what the handover milestones are, and where the risks of slipping are. A clean exit is almost always a programme that started early and ran to schedule. A costly exit is almost always a programme that started late and compressed everything into the final eight weeks.
Twelve Months Out: Read The Lease And Retrieve The Condition Report
The twelve-month mark is when the office manager pulls the lease document, the make-good clause, any schedule or condition report attached to the lease, and any landlord correspondence about fitout approvals, variations or agreed landlord works. None of this is the office manager’s to interpret, but all of it needs to be on one desk before the sponsor is briefed on the exit scope.
The make-good clause and any attached schedule define what the tenant is contractually required to do under an NSW commercial lease. The condition report, if one exists, defines the baseline against which the premises will be assessed. The fitout approval correspondence reveals what the landlord agreed to leave in place versus what the tenant installed and is responsible for removing. These three documents together frame the scope.
Where the condition report is thin, missing, or purely generic, the office manager flags it early. The tenant’s position at exit is stronger when a detailed condition report exists. When it does not, the scope of make good is more open to landlord interpretation, and the office manager’s job becomes harder. Knowing which of these situations applies changes how the conversations in the coming months run.
Nine Months Out: Sponsor Scope Consultation
At nine months out, the office manager presents the sponsor with a summary of the lease obligations and asks two questions. What will the business do after this lease ends? And what budget and appetite does the business have for the exit itself?
The answer to the first question shapes the exit path. A straight exit means a full defit and make good. A relocation to a new tenancy means the defit timing has to align with the incoming fitout at the new premises, which usually compresses the programme at both ends. A lease renewal changes the conversation entirely and may remove the need for a formal exit altogether. A short lease extension introduces a different set of decisions about which scopes to execute now and which to defer.
The answer to the second question sets the boundary for what is worth negotiating and what is worth simply executing. Some tenants take a firm position with the landlord on scope reductions, accept the time cost, and save money. Others prefer to execute the full scope quickly, even at higher cost, because the leadership time required to negotiate is worth more to the business than the savings. The split between who pays for make good at the end of a lease in NSW is rarely as clear as either party assumes, and the sponsor’s appetite for that conversation is what shapes the next two months of work. Neither approach is wrong; what matters is that the office manager knows which one the sponsor is backing.
Six Months Out: Landlord Engagement And Scope Alignment
At six months, the office manager opens formal communication with the landlord or managing agent about exit planning. The conversation covers the expected handover date, the make-good scope the tenant is planning to execute, any variations or concessions the tenant will be requesting, and the landlord’s inspection process. This is not a negotiation yet; it is a formal kickoff so neither side is surprised.
The same window is when the office manager commissions a make-good scope assessment from a fitout or defit contractor. The scope assessment catalogues what the tenant installed that must come out, what condition reinstatement requires, and what the likely cost and duration are. The assessment gives the sponsor a priced view of the exit scope and lets the landlord conversation move from theoretical to specific.
If the business wants to negotiate variations to the strict make-good scope, the six-month mark is when those proposals go to the landlord. Landlords typically have more flexibility earlier in the exit process than in the final weeks, and proposals made with time to consider them tend to land better than proposals raised when the works are already underway. Sensible variation proposals include landlord-retention of specific fitout elements that suit the incoming tenant, accepted wear rather than full repaint in zones that will be reconfigured anyway, and phased access for overlapping defit and reinstatement. The overlap between defit and incoming fitout is its own coordination problem and is easier to manage when both landlords are engaged early.
Four Months Out: Tender The Scope And Lock A Contractor
Four months out, the office manager runs the tender process for the defit and make-good scope. The output of the six-month scope assessment is refined into a tender-ready scope document, issued to two or three contractors, and a selection is made based on the usual mix of price, programme, references and fit. Signing a contractor at four months gives six to eight weeks of design and procurement, and four to six weeks of physical works, with contingency. Anything shorter is tighter than it should be.
This is also the window to confirm any landlord-specified contractors for building services. Some buildings require landlord-approved mechanical or electrical trades to execute works that affect base building systems, and the office manager needs to know which trades are tenant-choice and which are not before the programme is locked.
IT decommissioning and data-room retirement belong in this window too, because the cabling removal and comms-room strip-out often need to be sequenced ahead of the ceiling and partition works rather than after them. The office manager coordinates the IT lead’s programme against the defit contractor’s programme so the trades do not block each other.
Two Months Out: Internal Communication And Trade Coordination
At two months, internal communication becomes a real task. Staff need to know the exit date, the moving arrangements if the business is relocating, and what is happening to shared items such as filing, storage, furniture and kitchen stock. The office manager is usually the person running this communication, and starting it eight weeks out gives people time to manage their own transitions rather than being told at the last minute.
Trade coordination during this window is about sequencing. Furniture removal must clear the floor before partitions come down. Partitions must come down before ceiling access is needed. Services decommissioning must precede any trade that opens the ceiling. The defit contractor will set this sequence, but the office manager owns the gates in between, particularly around access, after-hours work and building manager liaison.
Photographic records at this stage are also worth the time. A systematic photo sweep before any physical works commence documents the state of the premises at the start of the exit. If any dispute arises later about whether a particular item of damage pre-existed the works, the pre-works photography is the relevant reference.
One Month Out: The Physical Works
During the final month, physical works run according to the contractor’s programme. The office manager is no longer directing the work; they are managing the interfaces around it. Access bookings with building management, after-hours work approvals, staff retrieval of personal items, coordination with the incoming premises if relocating, and any variations that arise during the works are all on the office manager’s desk.
Variations during live works are the most common source of programme slip. A ceiling tile condition that was worse than expected, a partition that was harder to remove than assumed, or a services run that was found in an unexpected location can each add days to the programme. The office manager’s role is to get variations priced and approved quickly so the contractor can keep moving, rather than to try to avoid them entirely.
This is also the window where it becomes obvious whether the landlord engagement in earlier months was productive. A landlord who agreed to a scope variation at six months out and then reopens the negotiation during the works is a difficult situation the office manager has to manage carefully; this is where the sponsor may need to re-engage. A landlord whose position is consistent from the six-month conversation through the works is the outcome the early engagement was meant to produce.
Handover Week
The final week is about the formal handover. The contractor completes the works, the office manager runs a pre-handover walk-through with the contractor, any touch-up items are addressed, and a joint walk-through with the landlord or managing agent is scheduled. The joint walk-through with the landlord is the practical moment where the make-good scope is signed off, and the office manager should be present with the contractor, the relevant photographs, and any variation documents.
The landlord walk-through usually produces a short list of items to address before final sign-off. Most are minor; some are substantive. The office manager closes these out with the contractor and confirms handover only when the landlord is satisfied. Keys return on the agreed date. Any outstanding bond or security deposit matters are then managed by the finance lead, not the office manager, but the office manager’s documentation from the preceding months is what the finance lead will rely on.
If the business is moving to new premises, the handover week overlaps with move-in at the new tenancy, and the office manager is running two sites at once. That overlap is why starting the exit programme twelve months out matters: the final week is chaotic enough without any of the earlier work still undone.
If you are an office manager running a Sydney commercial lease exit and want the defit and make-good scope coordinated against a realistic programme rather than a last-minute compression, we can help. We work across defit and make good as standalone scopes and inside overlapping fitout programmes, which means the exit planning is informed by what handover actually looks like rather than what it reads like in the clause.
📞 Call us on 1300 60 93 93