Nehru Place is Asia's best-known computer market, and behind the market are the towers: Eros, Modi, Chiranjiv and the rest, full of small suites. Most are IT firms, trading offices and back offices of twenty to a hundred people. The work is cabins, meeting rooms and reception fronts, and the constraint is always the same one - a lift built in the early eighties.
The lift is the first measurement
These towers went up in the early eighties and the lifts are the original size. In most of them a panel much over six and a half feet on the diagonal will not go in, and there is often no service lift at all.
So the lift car and lift door are measured before the office is. It sounds backwards and it is not: the room can be designed several ways, and the lift cannot be changed at all.
Once we know the limit, we set the panel sizes to it. A full-height run in a Nehru Place suite usually needs a slim vertical connector partway along, and that is a normal, deliberate detail rather than a compromise. It is invisible from a few feet away and it means every panel arrives intact.
Small suites, fitted around people working
A typical job here is one floor of one tower: four to six cabins, a meeting room, a reception front. Usually with staff still working in it.
That is fine, and it needs sequencing. We do one area at a time and finish it, rather than opening the whole floor at once. Cutting and drilling are contained and done early. Each evening the floor is left usable, not mid-job.
Where a suite can be emptied for a weekend, say so - it is faster and it costs less in labour, because the team is not working around desks. For many offices here a Saturday and Sunday is enough for the whole fit-out.
Leased suites, and building it to come out
Almost every suite in Nehru Place is leased, often on a short term, and that should decide the build rather than being discovered at the end.
An aluminium-framed partition bolts to the floor and the ceiling. At the end of the lease it unbolts and the structure is as it was. It is also the system to choose if the office is likely to be re-planned, because the panels can be moved.
Fully frameless glass on patch fittings is the better-looking result, and it is drilled into the structure. Reversing it means making good afterwards.
Both are proper builds. Tell us how long your lease has to run and what the landlord expects at handover, and we will tell you which one that points to.
