The Cat A curse

When a new commercial building is constructed, or an existing building is refurbished, there are three main definitions of office provision that can be delivered:

1. Shell and Core (or Shell and Floor): all building envelope complete, no lighting or ventilation, just provision for tenants to design their own. Flooring may be installed. Common areas and reception will be fitted out and landlord’s plant completed.
2. Category A (Cat A) fit-out: in addition to Shell and Core there will usually be a raised access floor, lighting, ceiling, ventilation, fire detection and alarms, and some basic internal finishes.
3. Category B (Cat B) fit-out: fully fitted-out space that includes all partitions and internal finishes, furniture, etc., ready for a tenant to move in.

It has been commonplace for office buildings – especially speculative ones – to develop to Cat A status. But what is wrong with this? One huge assumption that is made is that an incoming tenant wants that particular arrangement of lighting, ventilation, ceilings, etc. This may be fine if they have no meeting rooms, no requirements for cellular offices, and buy in to the aesthetic that the architect has predicted they will want. But this is rarely the case. Also, is a uniform lux level for lighting really needed across the whole plate? Did you know that, on average, 40% of a Cat A ceiling gets scrapped during the Cat B fit-out? And what happens to the lighting that the incoming tenant doesn’t want (which seems to happen more often than not) – does it get thrown away, repurposed on another site or stored somewhere (at significant cost) until they move out and have to reinstate the Cat A? How can this be sustainable?

Surely, a building should either be a raw shell ready for fit-out, or taken straight to Cat B with a specific tenant in mind. Who wants Cat A anyway? Of course, there may be some exceptions to this, e.g. where a small occupier wants to move quickly and will take a space with minimal changes (possibly for a short-term lease), or for a ‘curated’ Cat A that a co-working provider will deliver. But these will be the exceptions rather than the rule.

We have been talking to clients and developers about this problem for years. I understand that Cat A can demonstrate to potential tenants what the space could look like, but it’s too restrictive. Here are some possible alternatives to Cat A fit-out:

• Develop to Shell and Core, then just Cat A on a single floor, or part of a floor (like a show home in a new housing estate).
• Develop to Shell and Core, then choose one of the floors to act as a ‘show floor’. Within this space, subdivide it and have a number of Cat A solutions (e.g. full ceiling with flush luminaires, acoustic rafts with suspended luminaires, sprayed soffit, etc.). Surely the probability of attracting potential tenants will increase if they can see different options of what their area can look and feel like.
• Leave at Shell and Core, then use Augmented Reality to show a virtual overlay of different Cat A/B solutions.
• Create a digital twin of the building (in the Metaverse?) and show different fit-out options virtually. This is even more sustainable as prospective tenants do not need to travel around multiple locations.

We should be thinking more about the embodied carbon of our actions. Cat A is wasteful in every sense: materials, time and effort. Let’s consider cutting out this intermediate stage and either having the bare bones of a building (Shell and Core) or a fully curated Cat B that tenants want.