Scoring an office property strategically: five criteria that matter.

Criterion 1 — Capacity against actual peak demand

Capacity does not test whether the property has 'enough m²' — it tests whether lettable area matches your actual peak-day demand. Calculate FTE × (office days / 5) × 1.4 for peak factor, times roughly 12 m² per person-on-site as benchmark.

The sweet spot lies between 0.9 and 1.2 times that benchmark. Below 0.85 the property is structurally too tight on peak days — reconfiguring only partly solves that. Above 1.3 you pay for vacancy and your organisation pays the price of an office that looks too empty.

Criterion 2 — Growth runway without expansion

A property that fits today is not the same as a property that fits in three years. Run your three-year growth ambition through the same benchmark and look at the headroom percentage. Below 5 percent of slack you are back at the table within 18 months.

Also test whether the building is physically expandable — adjacent floors, an option on a neighbouring unit, or a partition that is easy to remove. A property without expansion optionality is acceptable if your growth is limited; in a growth scenario it is a risk.

Criterion 3 — Collaboration structure of the building

Floor plate and number of floors determine more about your work dynamic than you think up front. A high-collaboration organisation in a building with four or more floors and floor plates below 600 m² fragments structurally. Stair connections, generous atria and shared amenities on a central floor can partly mitigate — only partly.

For focus-heavy organisations the opposite holds: smaller, acoustically manageable spaces across multiple floors can actually be an asset. The art is not 'picking a good building', but 'picking the right building for your work dynamic'.

Criterion 4 — Talent and employer branding profile

Location, accessibility and image work for or against your talent strategy. A CBD or major transit hub scores consistently high for roles where you target experienced professionals with families or international talent. A peripheral location can work better for specific sectors — think deep-tech or life sciences near universities.

Combine this with the degree to which you host clients and the importance your brand places on physical presence. For law firms, family offices and consultancy the signal value of the property is often decisive; for B2B software organisations rarely.

Criterion 5 — Financial efficiency versus benchmark

Compare all-in rent (rent + service charges + indexation) with the benchmark for the location type. Rent materially above benchmark needs an honest 'why' — often there is one (recent delivery, high energy label, prime address), sometimes not. Rent materially below benchmark is equally suspect: verify technical condition, label and actual service levels before celebrating.

Always calculate Total Cost of Occupancy over 10 to 15 years — not year one. A property with an attractive starting rent and an aggressive indexation clause can come out more expensive over term than one that looks more expensive in year one.

How to apply the criteria in practice

Score each property independently on the five criteria — preferably with two or three board members in isolation. Then do not compare averages, compare spread. A property scoring around 70 on all five is more resilient than one scoring 95-90-40-85-60: averages deceive, the weakest sub-criterion will dominate.

• Below 55 on one criterion: usually a no-go, unless you can mitigate explicitly and with budget.
• Between 55 and 74: workable provided watch-outs flow into the design brief.
• 75 or higher on all five: rare — test extra strictly that you are not missing something.
• Use the Workplace Decision Scorecard as the computational frame; it does the maths and weights variables consistently.

What the scorecard does not replace

A strategic scorecard does not replace technical due diligence, ESG label investigation or independent rent review. It structures the strategic fit so the factual property research is spent on the right properties. Reversing the order — due diligence first, fit later — burns money on properties that would never have won strategically. For the prior question of whether to relocate at all, Should We Move Offices? is the right starting point.