Self-reflection: behind our own move
We wrote this guide partly because we could have used it ourselves. Here's the honest take on how our own move went, from the two people who ran it. VP of marketing Fabienne Walch scoped and planned the front half. Office manager Rebecca Baddeley steered it through construction. They learned many lessons the hard way so you don’t have to.
There’s an irony our office manager, who ran our own move, can’t get past. The pipes in our kitchen did not get plumbed to plan. The designs were drawn, it was discussed in meetings with all the right people, but something still went awry along the way.
“It’s so ironic, given I’m literally saying this so that people do their plumbing in advance for the hydration point, and we didn’t even manage to get it right,” says Aquablu office manager Rebecca Baddely.
But there was more to it than just planning. It also comes down to picking the right partners.
So, rather than pretend our own move was flawless, here’s what actually happened, the parts we’d do the same, and the parts we’ve learned from.
Function before finishes
The planning started as the ‘decide before design freeze’ ethos should, with what the office had to do long before how it would look.
Aquablu VP of marketing Fabienne Walch led the move from the brand side and asked every department the same thing. Not “what do you want,” but “if you could change one thing.” The answers were almost entirely practical.
“The big things were very pragmatic: phone booths, meeting rooms, kitchens, the walk to the hydration points, to the pantry, and the separation of teams that are on calls a lot and are noisy from the ones doing deep work,” she says. “That was, I think, ninety per cent of what we got back.”
Nothing about aesthetics. “It’s really about going to the office to be able to focus, to not be stressed because of the noise or harsh lighting. Very much functionality.”
That set the order. Rooms and layout needed to be decided first, because those were fixed by the space itself. “First we had to know how many rooms we needed, and whether the space even allowed it.”
From there, we chose materials that reflect our brand identity and not personal preference. Light woods and cool steel. Sleek finishes and interesting textures. While the feedback on look and feel was only positive, the success of an office comes down to functional design more than finishes.
“You can’t lead with design, because people will do whatever they want,” Fabienne says. “You need to understand how they move, where they go, where they eat their toasties, and then plan around that.”
“That’s why we decided on two floors. Downstairs is the messy floor. But upstairs the kitchen needs to be clean.”
We didn’t manage to get it all right. For example, downstairs some cupboards are out of reach for anyone who isn’t over six feet. The glasses cupboard relative to the dishwasher is not as accessible as it could be. Small things that are easily overlooked in the design process without an expert guiding you through it.
“With small things, like how do you open a cabinet, you really need to think about it the way a person approaches it, like with a house. If there’s a table in the middle, and you walk in from the right side, your natural motion will always go one way. There are so many little things like that to consider,” Fabienne says.
The lesson: how people move needs to be considered above aesthetics.
Prioritize what’s behind the walls
This is where our move earned its scars.
Fabienne knows first-hand the importance of getting the parts behind the walls right and what to fix early. “Water connection, drainage. Electricity is easy, it’s never an issue, you can always pull a cable from somewhere. But water is the most important. And the pipes and the points.”
She learned it in real time. The showers the team wanted nearly didn’t happen. “If you want showers you really need to understand whether it’s possible to pull pipes through. We had a concrete floor. We can’t pull pipes, we can’t drill into the concrete floor.”
And when it came to ventilation, the early calls required expertise that were beyond our skillset. The issue was, when viewing the building, we understood the legal requirements were already met. They weren’t.
“We had to do the full ventilation ourselves, and we didn’t expect that,” says Fabienne. “It’s insanely expensive. No scale-up can really absorb it.”
Her advice from it is the one that keeps echoing across everyone we spoke to: get the behind-the-walls knowledge into the room before you sign, and take someone who understands buildings to every deal you do. “Take someone with you, or know the rules for your country,” she says.
“People tend to take liberties if they don’t feel like you’re massively onto it." - Rebecca Baddeley, Office Manager, Aquablu
Manage the people, not just the plan
If the plan is a living thing you manage, Rebecca was busy breathing life into it from the day she picked it up.
She came in mid-construction, into contractors who were already at war. “There was serious contention between some of the contractors, all blaming each other for different things.”
Her diagnosis matches Yalcin’s advice on page 67 almost word for word: contractors do what they want unless you’re chasing relentlessly.
“People tend to take liberties if they don’t feel like you’re massively onto it,” she says. “With really clear communication and really clear expectations that you then follow up on, every day.” When asked how she would approach it if she could start again, Rebecca says "by having fingers in every pie right from the get-go. You’ve got a more innate understanding of what needs to be done and how to handle it.”
Fabienne says she'd consider putting in place contractual measures. “Service level agreements are really, really important. When you work with building companies, make sure you keep them accountable for how fast they build something and to what standards.” Put teeth in the contract: “if they fail what are the consequences? Make them clear from the beginning. Mostly monetary fines are the biggest motivation.”
And both landed, independently, on the same final takeaway: consider your contractors carefully.
This was where the plumbing went wrong. Despite having weekly meetings with the builders and architects, including one in person before the install, the plan was not followed.
“The builders. They did mess up there. They didn’t follow the drawings. I think the architects also messed up a little bit. I think everyone had a bit of a role in it, there was some miscommunication, but the builders really messed up.”
When asked how it could have been avoided, Rebecca gives a clear answer: “The quality of the subcontractors and where they’re based.” Ours were scattered across Europe, “they’re hard to get hold of, and they can’t just come here and fix something.”
Fabienne takes it further. “Ask people who have worked with them before what their experience was. Don’t go for the cheapest, because they eventually won’t deliver what you want. Go for maybe the premium one where you have a really good feeling. And just be very clear contractually.”
“Water connection, drainage. Electricity is easy. But water is the most important.”- Fabienne Walch, VP of Marketing, Aquablu
What we'd tell you
We got the order right: function first, requests mapped, the brief built around how people work. We got the discipline right in the end, Rebecca refused to let it fail.
What we’d change is upstream of all of it: the behind-the-walls calls and the people making them. Spec the water and the ventilation early, check the plan back against real use before the freeze, and hire subcontractors you can actually reach and hold to account.
We wrote the chapter because we learned it the expensive way. Decide before design freezes - especially the things behind the walls. Take it from the people who didn’t, in their own office.
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Decide Before Design Freeze
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Getting It Right Without Doing It All
An office move can be a huge undertaking. But nobody does it alone. Three office managers who have been through it tell us what mattered most, what they let go of, and how they stayed sane doing it.
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