You have done your homework and thought long and hard about whether raised access flooring is right for you. You may have used some of our earlier articles to help with that research, particularly the one about whether you should install raised flooring at all. Now that you have done that, comes the next step of actually designing that raised floor. This is actually the more difficult part!
It is also why we say that you should engage a designer at the earliest opportunity. Installing raised flooring is not as simple as deciding on a flooring material, such as carpet or vinyl tiles, although that will come with time as you determine the finish of your raised flooring. We have compiled a short guide on the reasons why bringing a designer on board early on is not an overheard but a sound long-term investment.
Getting the spec right from the start
Whatever your business or your reasons and need for raised flooring an important consideration is how things may change over time. No one has a crystal ball to know what the future will bring, but you will have an idea of how you want your business to develop over the next three to five years. You may wish to stay small, niche, and very focused on a small area of business. On the other hand, you may have fast growth plans to expand organically or to acquire other companies, leading to large-scale changes bringing in significant numbers of new people over a short period of time. It will be far more cost effective to build that into your specification now than to try to shoehorn in more desks, people and/or storage overnight. A designer can help you to build in the flexibility to expand and change to adapt to whatever your new reality may be while keeping costs manageable and not spending money before you have to.
Designing the whole space
What exactly do we mean by that? Using a designer from the very beginning means that you can take below and above floor uses into consideration. For example, a designer can also help you to lay out your floor plan – where desks will go, how many there will be, and where the connection points will go for electric sockets, internet ports, and telephone lines. They will also ensure that if they are designing for future expansion that these will not have to be changed or moved when that times comes, but that they can be extended as necessary to cater for the new users. The same applies if you are building a cold-storage server room facility that is likely to grow; as far as possible, you want to avoid any major changes that could lead to ripping up existing floors in order to increase capacity.
Materials
Whatever you use your raised flooring for, you will have a choice of suitable materials – both for flooring finishes as well as the raised floor structure itself. If you have all the information you need from the outset, you can better make the right decisions for the short, medium, and long term.
For new and retrofit designs of raised flooring, our designers at Fieldmans Access Floors are trained to offer you the right choices for your needs. Just give us a call on 020 8462 7100 for an initial chat or to book an appointment.
