Stay and refurbish, or relocate to a new office? This tool brings together three layers of decision-making: it benchmarks relocation costs against upgrading your existing space, breaks down lease offers into comparable components, and highlights potential “red flags” that can disrupt your timeline even after agreements are signed.
As a Design & Build expert, we provide a proprietary decision engine built on real project data. Use our calculators to accurately estimate your CAPEX, validate the true Total Cost of Occupancy (TCO), and identify technical and contractual risks before they impact your investment.
This module combines three decision layers. First, it compares the scenario of staying in your current office against relocation, then breaks lease offers down into comparable components, and finally highlights legal and technical red flags that can derail your budget or timeline after the documents have already been signed.
The system compares the cost of refurbishing your current office against a full relocation, including reinstatement, logistics, time, rent overlap, and the cost of temporary solutions.
At the end, you receive a recommendation together with a decision risk index. This is a supporting heuristic, not an objective credit-style rating.
The scenarios are modelled on real cash flow over time, with entry costs distributed more realistically than under a simple flat monthly allocation.
This is an indicative model. Its purpose is to structure the investment decision and capture items that are usually missed at the early stage.
The mode below changes only the interpretation of the recommendation, not the financial model itself or the NPV calculation.
The result will show whether refurbishing the current office or relocating to a new space is the more rational economic decision.
The system will show the difference between the scenarios after discounting entry costs, exit costs, rent, and risk.
This is not a simple rent comparison. The tool calculates the true cost of entry after taking into account landlord contribution, rent-free months, fit-out top-up, service charges, incoming standard, and the cost of time.
Once we add tenant-side fit-out budget, service charges, additional operating costs, incoming standard, and the cost of time, the ranking of offers can change completely.
First, we define a consistent comparison framework. This ensures the ranking is driven by actual differences between offers, not by inconsistent input data.
The cost of time is applied only to weeks beyond the acceptable entry benchmark, not to the entire programme.
The system will show which offer provides the best overall balance after taking into account base rent, service charges, landlord contribution, rent-free months, tenant fit-out top-up, additional costs, incoming standard adjustment, and NPV.
This layer captures the risks that do not show up in a spreadsheet alone: problematic lease clauses, building constraints, missing technical confirmations, and gaps in the delivery standard.
Even a financially attractive offer may still be the wrong decision if the lease contains blockers or the building cannot support the programme, power, ventilation, or logistics you need.
Tick the constraints that apply to the offer, building, or process being analysed. The module will calculate an overall risk score and indicate the priority actions.
The module will show whether the offer or building requires a full legal and technical audit before any further decision is made.
The Total Cost of Occupancy calculator shows the full cost of the decision over time, but its output depends on whether the office area has been matched correctly to the team and what the real cost of preparing the space will be. That is why it is worth validating both the test fit and the fit-out budget as well.
Verify workplace capacity, programme feasibility, and whether the assumed office area makes operational sense for the team, meeting rooms, private offices, and shared spaces.
Estimate the cost of fit-out, MEP works, glazing, built-in joinery, AV/IT, and finish standard, so you can see the full cost of the decision — not only in rent, but also at the start of the project.
Together, these three calculators create the Ecoffices decision framework: space requirement → investment cost → occupancy cost.
In business practice, the question “stay or move?” is almost never only a question about rent. It is a question about the total cost of the decision, its impact on the organisation, schedule, cash flow, quality of work, legal risk and technical feasibility. That is why a professional office analysis should not be limited to a simple comparison of rates per square metre. It should include the full cost of office lease, meaning the full cost of using and changing the space, as well as the discounted scenario cost, entry cost, exit cost, operating costs, landlord contribution, rent-free period, service charges, make-good cost, maximum cash peak, delays, temporary solutions, handover standard, lease flexibility and real red flags that may overturn the project after the management decision has already been made.
The data below shows six sample office decision scenarios calculated according to the full cost of decision logic: rent, service charges, entry cost, landlord contribution, rent-free period, exit costs, lease overlap, cash outflow in the first 12 months, maximum cash peak, discounted scenario cost and implementation risk. These are not offer data, but model scenarios showing why the rent rate alone is not enough to make a decision.
| Scenario | Decision | Area | Team | Term | Rent | Service charges | Entry / modernisation cost | Landlord contribution | Rent-free period | Lease overlap | Make-good cost | Relocation / logistics | 12-month cash outflow | Max. cash peak | Nominal 60-month cost | Discounted scenario cost | Disc. cost / m² / month | Disc. cost / workstation / month | Risk score | Main driver | Management conclusion |
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The 1350 m² scenario shows that lower base rent can lose against larger area, weaker landlord contribution and higher entry costs.
Discounted cost shows the economics over time, but cash peak shows whether the organisation can carry the scenario in the first phase of the project.
A large project may have a high nominal cost, but with efficient area, landlord package and risk control, the result per workstation can be competitive.
The Ecoffices calculator compares two primary scenarios: staying and modernising the current office versus relocating to a new workplace.
This is not a simple rent-per-sqm calculator. It is an Ecoffices decision model designed to show which option is more rational economically and operationally.
No. A lower base rent does not automatically mean a lower office TCO.
In the Ecoffices methodology, the real attractiveness of an offer depends on the combined effect of:
It is common for an offer with a higher headline rent to perform better after full modelling, because it comes with a stronger landlord package, a shorter programme and a lower real entry cost.
Office TCO means the total cost of the decision, not just rent.
That is exactly why an Ecoffices TCO analysis is more useful for board-level decision-making than a simple comparison of rental rates.
Because the “stay” scenario cannot be modelled as if the current rent applied throughout the full analysis horizon.
If the current lease ends in 8, 10 or 12 months, the tenant will usually move into a new rent level, revised commercial terms or a fresh negotiation with the landlord. That means staying in the office is also a time-sensitive scenario.
A proper Ecoffices analysis therefore separates:
Make-good is the cost of reinstating the old premises to the condition required at handback to the landlord.
In practice, this is one of the most frequently overlooked relocation costs. A new-building offer may look attractive, but once make-good is added, the economic advantage can shrink materially.
Landlord contribution improves entry economics, but it does not always act like immediate cash in hand.
From the tenant’s perspective, three things matter:
In practice, landlord contribution may be settled:
That is why an offer with a strong landlord contribution may still look good in NPV, while generating high peak cash on the tenant side in the first months.
Free rent improves entry economics, but it does not replace a full TCO review.
Rent-free months matter because they reduce the early-stage burden of the lease. That does not automatically mean that an offer with more free rent is the better one.
NPV allows scenarios to be compared with the timing of cost taken into account.
The same amount spent today and the same amount spent in two or three years do not have the same economic weight. That is why a professional analysis should not stop at nominal cost.
All of this should be treated as cash flow over time. That is exactly what NPV is for, and why it is built into the Ecoffices decision framework.
These are two practical indicators showing the real financial burden of the project.
Two options may have similar NPV or nominal cost, while being completely different in terms of how much cash must be committed at the start. For a CFO or board, this is often just as important as the total cost itself.
In practice, the right view is the full chain: design, approvals, delivery and move-in to the completed office.
The timeline depends on the handover standard of the space, office size, programme complexity and building procedures. The more approvals and changes along the way, the higher the risk of delay.
Yes, but modernisation delivered in a live office has its own cost and its own risks.
That is why staying and modernising should never be treated as a “no-cost” option. In the Ecoffices approach, it is a full investment scenario that should be modelled just as rigorously as relocation.
The better the input data, the lower the risk of error in TCO and programme modelling.
The most dangerous risks are the ones not yet priced, but highly capable of changing the budget or the programme.
On the legal side:
On the technical side:
Yes — if the goal is to show the real budget of the decision, not only the bare construction cost.
In many organisations, these elements are exactly what create the gap between an initial fit-out estimate and the real investment budget.
When the full commercial and operational balance is better than the rent headline alone suggests.
Relocation may still be the stronger option despite a higher rent if:
That is exactly why lease offers should be benchmarked through a TCO framework according to the Ecoffices model, not through base rent alone.
Jesteśmy partnerem w projektowaniu i realizacji fit-out biur. Wspieramy inwestorów na każdym etapie procesu – od koncepcji, przez projekt, aż po sprawną realizację przestrzeni biurowych dopasowanych do realnych potrzeb organizacji.