Commercial Builders in London

Commercial construction in London

Commercial work in London covers offices, shops, bars, restaurants, hotels and the odd clinic or surgery. The building types differ a lot, but most jobs share one problem: somebody is waiting to trade, or already trading next door, and the programme has to work around them.

Most of it isn’t new build. It’s strip-out, alteration and fit-out inside buildings that were put up for something else, often a Victorian shop with flats above or a 1960s office block with tired services. The rest is new build, extensions and larger refurbishments where the structure itself changes.

The kinds of work

Offices are mostly partitions, ceilings, lighting, power, data and air conditioning. The services decide the programme. Air conditioning units, switchgear and distribution boards can take several weeks to arrive, and they need to be ordered before the partitions go up, not after.

Shops run to a fixed opening date. The landlord’s licence for alterations, the shopfront, signage and enough electrical capacity are the usual things that hold them up.

Bars and restaurants are the hardest. Extraction, gas, grease traps, drainage, resin floors in the kitchen and sound insulation if there are flats above. In London there usually are. The Cleveland Arms in Paddington is an example of how much of that can end up in one building: a pub, a basement restaurant and three flats above.

Hotels and healthcare buildings bring stricter fire, ventilation and accessibility requirements.

How the contract is set up matters as much as the building. Design and build, where one company does the drawings and the construction, is covered in detail in the article on commercial design and build in London.

Strip-out and demolition

Almost every commercial job starts with taking something out. For anything more than an internal strip-out, the Building Act 1984 requires notice to the council first:

“No person shall begin a demolition to which this section applies unless— (a) he has given the local authority notice of his intention to do so, and (b) either— (i) the local authority have given a notice to him under section 81…”

Building Act 1984, section 80(2)

The section doesn’t apply to internal demolition in a building that is occupied and will stay occupied, or to small structures under 1,750 cubic feet. The limit is still written in cubic feet, even though the Act dates from 1984. Taking down a rear warehouse, a canopy or a whole building needs the notice, and the council then has six weeks to respond with conditions about shoring, neighbouring buildings, services and clearing the site.

Before any strip-out in a building put up or refurbished before 2000, there should be an asbestos survey. Textured ceilings, floor tiles, pipe lagging and old fire doors are where it usually turns up in commercial buildings.

Noise and working hours

In central London, councils set standard hours for noisy work, usually around 8am to 6pm on weekdays and a morning on Saturday, with nothing on Sundays or bank holidays. On larger jobs, or where night working is planned, a contractor can apply in advance under the Control of Pollution Act 1974:

“A person who intends to carry out works to which the preceding section applies may apply to the local authority for a consent under this section.”

Control of Pollution Act 1974, section 61(1)

The application has to give the method of working and “the steps proposed to be taken to minimise noise resulting from the works”. Once consent is granted, the council can’t serve a noise notice for work done in line with it. Without one, an environmental health officer can serve a notice under section 60 and stop the breaking-out halfway through the week. In the City and Westminster, a section 61 consent is often expected on anything substantial.

Waste

Commercial strip-outs make a lot of waste: ceiling tiles, carpet, old partitions, light fittings, plasterboard. The law puts responsibility on everyone in the chain, not just the skip company:

“it shall be the duty of any person who imports, produces, carries, keeps, treats or disposes of controlled waste … to take all such measures applicable to him in that capacity as are reasonable in the circumstances— … (b) to prevent the escape of the waste from his control or that of any other person”

Environmental Protection Act 1990, section 34(1)

In practice that means using a registered waste carrier, getting a waste transfer note for every load, and keeping the notes for at least two years. If waste from a site turns up fly-tipped, the producer can be prosecuted as well as the person who dumped it. Plasterboard has to be kept separate from general waste, and fluorescent tubes and electrical equipment go as hazardous or WEEE waste.

Skips on the road need a licence from the council, and so does scaffolding over the pavement. On a busy central street the council may refuse a skip altogether and expect waste to go out in bags or by grab lorry.

Working in an occupied building

A lot of commercial work happens with the business still open, or with other tenants in the building. That changes everything about the job: phasing, dust screens that actually seal, deliveries at set times, and a route for materials that doesn’t cross the customers’ path. Escape routes can’t be blocked, even for an hour.

Night and weekend working costs more per hour. It can still be cheaper overall if it means trading doesn’t stop.

Energy and services

Energy rules now shape most commercial refurbishments. New services, lighting and insulation all have to meet Part L, and landlords can’t let most commercial property with an EPC below E. On older buildings that often means insulating a roof, replacing lighting with LED and upgrading heating controls as part of a fit-out.

Green roofs need a structure that can take the extra weight when the soil is saturated.

Modular, reuse and digital tools

A few things are changing how commercial jobs get built. Prefabricated sections, such as bathroom pods and timber or steel frame panels, are made off site and craned in, which shortens the site programme but needs the design fixed earlier. More owners are keeping existing buildings and refitting them instead of demolishing, partly for cost and partly because the carbon in a concrete frame is already spent.

BIM (Building Information Modelling) puts the structure, services and architecture into one shared 3D model, so clashes between a duct and a beam show up on screen before they show up on site. On small fit-outs it’s often not worth the cost. On a multi-storey refurbishment with complicated services, it usually is.

A bit of history

London’s building rules started with fire. After the Great Fire of 1666, the Rebuilding Act of 1667 required new houses in the City to be built of brick or stone, and sorted them into four types by the street they stood on, each with set storey heights and wall thicknesses. Later London Building Acts kept that approach for over two centuries, with district surveyors checking the work. Building control in London still traces back to that system.

Force Builders Ltd carries out commercial construction, fit-outs and refurbishments across London.