Practice fitout FAQs

Because the first question anyone asks is what it costs per square metre, and making someone book three meetings to find out is a bad trade for them. Every rate on this site is a planning figure with its assumptions attached, so you can rule a tenancy in or out in ninety seconds.

No. It is an order-of-magnitude planning figure, exclusive of GST and clinical equipment. A priced scope follows a site assessment and a documented design, and it will reflect your shell, your equipment schedule and your approvals pathway.

Clinical equipment, GST, radiation shielding and licensing, base building upgrades the landlord requires, cold shell works, council and certifier fees, consultant reports, loose furniture, IT hardware, signage, and rent during construction.

Trade rates vary between capitals, but not by anything like as much as shell condition varies between two tenancies on the same street. What genuinely differs by city is how long approval takes, which shows up as rent during construction rather than in the build rate.

In stages. An indicative range while you are still looking at sites, an order-of-magnitude budget against a test fit, then a priced scope once the design is documented and the shell condition and equipment schedule are settled. Each stage narrows the range, and where it lands depends on your tenancy not on anything decided in advance.

Before you sign. The cheapest moment to discover that a tenancy can’t take your practice is while walking away is still free, and it’s the most expensive thing to discover afterwards.

A warm shell arrives with conditioned air, a ceiling grid, lighting, sprinklers, an accessible path of travel and usually a bathroom. A cold shell is a concrete box with power and a water point. The difference is roughly $350 to $550 per square metre before you choose a finish.

Accessible access under AS 1428.1, then whether services can physically reach where you need them, then parking against the council requirement, then floor loading where imaging is involved. Rarely the floor plan.

Yes, and early. Make-good is an obligation to return the tenancy to its original condition at the end of the term, and for a clinical fitout that can mean removing partitions, plant, shielding and services you paid to install.

Usually, because the use is changing. A tenancy last used as a shop or an office sits in a different use class to a health-care facility, and the change is assessed separately from the construction works.

Construction on a typical 150 to 250 square metre clinic is a matter of weeks. Design, documentation and approvals in front of it are usually the longer half, and they vary most between councils.

Approvals first, by a distance. Then equipment selected after documentation is complete, which forces drawings and sometimes approvals to change. Then long-lead items such as an electrical supply upgrade that nobody flagged.

Usually, by staging the work so a functioning set of rooms, reception and an accessible toilet is always available. It costs more than a continuous program and is often still cheaper than closing. Worth pricing both ways.

AS 1428.1 for accessible access, AS 1668.2 for ventilation, AS/NZS 4815 or 4187 for reprocessing, and the National Construction Code for classification, egress and sanitary provisions. Sector requirements sit on top: the RACGP Standards for accredited general practice, radiation licensing wherever imaging is used, laser controlled areas for cosmetic clinics.

For acoustic privacy, in practice yes. A partition stopped at the ceiling grid leaves a shared ceiling void between two rooms and conversation carries straight over the top.

A one-way flow: receiving, cleaning, inspection, packaging, sterilising, then sterile storage, with nothing moving forward crossing anything not yet cleaned. Which means clean and dirty cannot share a bench, and the autoclave cannot sit in the middle of one.

A registered certifier or building surveyor, depending on your state, and specialist consultants for their own disciplines. We coordinate them; we don’t certify our own work.

No. Equipment is bought directly from your supplier and is excluded from every rate on this site. What we do is coordinate it, which means the services are set out to the manufacturer's requirements before anything is built.

Before documentation. Every significant instrument dictates its own footprint, clearances, power, data, floor loading and environmental conditions. Choosing after the drawings are done is the most expensive sequencing error in clinical fitout.

Shielding is designed by a radiation consultant for the specific unit, its workload and what occupies the space behind every wall. The premises are then licensed by the state regulator, and that runs alongside construction rather than after it.

A floor plan and the draft lease. Those two documents tell us more in five minutes than a phone call does in an hour. If you have neither, the address and approximate area is enough.

An indicative range for your sector and area, the specific things about that tenancy that would move it, and an honest view on whether the use change looks like a straightforward approval or a long one. Sometimes that answer is that the site will not work.

Yes, concept to completion, and we coordinate the consultants a clinical project needs: mechanical, hydraulic, acoustic, access and radiation shielding.

Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide and Canberra. The standards do not change with the postcode; the approvals pathway does.