CAT A Fit Out Office Fit Out Commercial Building
What is the difference between Cat A and Cat B?
What is Cat B Fit Out?
Cat B (also known as Category B fit out) follows on from a Cat A fit out to provide a space that your company can simply move into and start working. Since this is something often tailored to your brand, these are usually left for the tenant to design and install.
There’s a lot of work that goes into transforming the blank canvas of a Cat A fit out into a functioning Cat B space. A Cat B office fit out would ideally be tailored to the individual needs of your business and workforce, delivering the right mix of workstations, breakout areas and meeting rooms. Plans are often done before any design work is started to understand how employees are using their desks and meeting rooms, ensuring that the new design is a suitable fit for the workforce.
A tailored Cat B fit out should also reflect your brand and work ethos; including furniture and custom design elements that embody your corporate personality. This isn’t just about choosing desks and furniture, but about ensuring that your office is somewhere that your employees will love to work; all while helping you attract and retain your industry’s best talent.
What’s usually included in your Cat B fit out:
- Fully-fitted kitchens and non-communal office amenities
- Partitioning; including meeting rooms, offices and breakout spaces
- Workstations and furniture
- Re-routing air conditioning and power points
- IT installation and infrastructure
- Design and brand detailing.
What is Cat A Fit Out?
While there’s no standard specification, Cat A spaces (also known as Category A fit outs) are usually finished with a suspended ceiling, lighting, heating, and raised flooring. This would be the functioning space that landlords would lease, leaving it up to tenants to install the functional design and finishes that suit their workplace through the form of a Cat B fit out.
It’s all pretty basic, but it’s a habitable space and usually with no concrete in sight! If you’re thinking all you need to do now is move in and furnish the space, you might want to think twice.
While a Cat A space could technically be habitable, they are often a bare-bones, open-plan finish that’s then treated as a blank canvas for interior and office designers. We wouldn’t recommend moving straight into a Cat A space, as you won’t have your funky breakout area, meeting rooms or cosy kitchen to sit down with a cuppa. For this, you’ll need to install a Cat B fit out.
What’s usually included in your Cat A fit out:
- Raised floors and suspended ceilings (with a basic finish)
- Basic mechanical and electrical services
- Fire detection services and smoke alarms
- Air-conditioning and ventilation (HVAC)
- Basic internal finishes
There can be vastly different standards of a Cat B fit out, depending on what you negotiate. While most of our projects are a full Cat B, designed with furniture and workplace interactions in mind, some landlord provided ‘Cat B’ spaces can just be room partitions, tea points and carpet.
You have found a new space and it has a CAT A fit out ready for you to adapt to your needs. Our team can work with you to create your perfect environment working with the existing building services
