A strata office fitout differs from a fitout in a single-owner tower in one physical way: the boundary of the suite runs straight through things a fitout normally touches. The entry door, the existing ceiling, the pipes in the walls and the lift the materials come up in can all belong to the owners corporation rather than to the suite, and the building is usually run through a strata manager and a committee instead of an on-site building management team.
That changes how we scope and sequence the works far more than how we build them. Partitions, ceilings and finishes inside the suite go up the same way they would anywhere else. What needs planning is everything sitting on the line between the suite and the building, and the route the works take from the street to the door.
Where the Suite Ends and the Building Begins
In a NSW strata scheme the lot is broadly the inside of the suite, while items such as common walls, external doors, roofs, pipes and electrical wiring are typically common property owned by all the owners together. The NSW Government's own guidance is that what counts as common property can change from one scheme to the next, and the strata plan and by-laws are what settle it for a particular building.
That is why we ask for the strata plan and the by-laws before we price a strata suite, alongside the lease. Some schemes have adopted the NSW Government's common property memorandum, which sets out item by item whether the owners corporation or the lot owner looks after things like ceilings, doors and air conditioning. Where a building has adopted it, we have a clear list to scope against rather than an assumption.
For a tenant, the lot owner is the landlord, so the strata side of an approval normally travels through them. We run it in parallel with the lease approval, using the same drawings and the same groundwork as getting your landlord on board with a fitout, so neither one is waiting on the other.
The Parts of a Fitout That Sit on the Boundary
Most of a commercial fitout sits comfortably inside the lot. The items that cross the line are fairly predictable, and on a strata suite we list them separately in the scope so they can be priced, drawn and put forward as their own package.
- The suite entry door. Where a scheme uses the memorandum, the entrance door to a lot, its hardware and its closer are on the owners corporation's list, so swapping a solid door for a glazed one is a boundary item.
- The existing ceiling. The memorandum places plastered ceilings, and false ceilings installed when the plan was registered, with the owners corporation apart from painting, so removing what is there needs checking first.
- Anything through the slab or a common wall. A new floor waste, a cable route to another level or a core for a services connection penetrates common property and has to be sealed and made good.
- Air conditioning. On the memorandum, a system serving more than one lot sits with the owners corporation, while a unit serving only the suite sits with the lot owner, although its outdoor unit may need a place on the roof or another common area.
- Fire detection. Smoke detectors and other fire safety equipment appear on the memorandum's owners corporation list, whether or not they connect to the building's fire panel.
- Windows in common walls, and anything fixed to them.
Pulling these out at quoting means the strata request describes a handful of specific items with drawings and a method, instead of the whole fitout. The rooms inside the suite are then not held up by a question about a door closer.
Scoping and Sequencing the Works Around the Approval
NSW strata rules separate cosmetic work, which generally needs no approval, from renovations that need the agreement of the owners corporation, and work that changes common property can need a resolution passed at a general meeting. Which path a given item takes depends on the item and the scheme, and the strata manager is usually the one who confirms it.
The part we control is how early a clean package goes in. A strata committee may only sit once a month, so the boundary items are lodged as soon as the layout is settled rather than when the programme reaches them. The package is the build side of the request: a marked-up plan of each boundary item, how any penetration will be sealed, the delivery route, the protection going down in common areas, the trades involved, and the proposed dates and working hours.
Sequencing then follows the answer. Framing, sheeting and the rooms inside the suite can be programmed first where the lease and the landlord allow it, and the door, the ceiling changes and any cores wait for approval without stopping everything else. Delivering the job as a complete office fitout keeps those two streams in one programme, so the approved items land in the week they were planned for.
Deliveries in a Building Without a Dock
Many strata office buildings, particularly the suites above shops across the Eastern Suburbs, have no loading dock and a single passenger lift shared by every lot. Material comes off the street, through a common lobby and up that lift, which puts the whole delivery route on common property from the kerb to the suite door.
We measure the lift car, the lobby doors and the corridor turns at the site visit, then order plasterboard, framing and ceiling components in lengths that fit. Deliveries are split into smaller loads across early mornings rather than landed in one go, and waste leaves the same way in bagged loads.
That extra handling shows up as labour hours, which is how lift access and loading docks change what a job costs. We agree with the strata manager which lift is used, at what times, and whether it needs to come out of normal service while a load goes up, and that booking pattern goes into the programme we price.
Protecting the Common Areas from Day One
Because the lobby, lift and corridors belong to every owner, protection goes down in the common areas before anything goes up inside the suite. That means lift wall blankets and floor covering in the car, corner guards along the route, and floor protection running from the lift door to the suite entry.
Before any of it goes down, we photograph the whole route: the lift car, the lobby floor, the corridor walls and the existing suite door. The strata manager gets a copy at the start, and the same record at the end shows what the common areas looked like before the works, which keeps the hand-back a short conversation.
Dust is the other shared issue. A suite may sit on air paths or mechanical plant that also serve other lots, so we seal the entry during demolition and cutting, clean the corridor at the end of each day, and cover detectors during dusty work, with any isolation arranged through whoever maintains the building's fire system and the covers removed before the site is left.
Sequencing Noisy Work Around the By-Laws
By-laws differ from scheme to scheme, and they commonly deal with noise, renovations and how common property can be used. In a mixed building with apartments above or beside the suite, the rules and the neighbours tend to be less tolerant of noise than in a commercial tower, where a building manager is used to trades on the floor.
We group anything that drills, cuts or fixes into concrete into the permitted windows, early in the programme and early in the day. Sheeting, setting, ceiling installation and painting are quiet enough to fill the remaining hours, so the loud work is compressed rather than spread across every day of the job.
One habit from tower work does not carry over. After-hours work, which is how noise is usually managed in a busy office building, can make things worse in a building where people live, so a strata suite with residents is normally programmed around daytime hours. Where a by-law or the strata manager limits noisy work to part of the day, the programme is longer, and we show that in what we price rather than discovering it on site.
Tying New Services into a Shared Building
Kitchenettes, hand basins, extra power and a dedicated air-conditioning unit are the services most strata suites add, and each one ends at something shared. In schemes using the memorandum, pipes within a common property wall, floor or ceiling, and the fuses and board in the building's meter room, sit with the owners corporation, while a board serving only the suite belongs to the lot.
When we lay out a strata suite, new wet areas go as close as the plan allows to the existing plumbing connection, so a sink drains into what is already there instead of needing a fresh penetration through the slab to the lot below. Power is handled the same way: we check what the suite's own board can carry before the layout is fixed, because more supply from the main board becomes a request to the owners corporation.
Older strata buildings rarely come with reliable services drawings, so we open up ceilings and wall cavities to look before pricing where we can. Services capacity limits every tenancy, and in a strata building the base building constraints are answered by the strata manager and the owners corporation's own contractors instead of a facilities team.
On a strata suite we price the items that cross into common property as their own package from the first site visit, so the owners corporation sees exactly what the works touch before our trades arrive.
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