An office fit-out in Johannesburg is a planning problem before it is a furniture problem. Turnkey means one programme for the shell and the joinery: survey, drawings, workshop build, and a phased install that a live floor can survive. This guide is that plan. Feature desks and board tables, when they are the whole brief, sit on reception and boardroom joinery. The workplace service is turnkey office fit-outs. The wider sequence is our turnkey design process.
What turnkey means on a Gauteng floor
Turnkey is not “we also sell chairs”. It is one lead for partitions, ceilings, flooring, power and data routes, reception, workstations, and the breakroom, so the floor does not collect three contractors who have never seen each other’s drawings. Joinery is cut in Booysens. The shell is coordinated to the same survey.
If you only need a reception desk, do not buy a full-floor refurb to get it. If you need both, draw them together. A desk designed before the bulkhead moves will not fit the bulkhead.
The planning sequence
Start with how people work: heads-down, calls, visitors, stock. Then the building: lift size, after-hours rules, ceiling void, and whether the floor stays live. Draw the plan with rooms, not with a furniture catalogue. Lock meeting rooms, focus rooms, and the path a guest walks from the lift to a person.
A single-floor workplace programme typically runs 10–16 weeks from signed drawings, depending on drywall extent, ceiling works, flooring, and after-hours access. Multi-floor or live-floor installs are programmed before cutting starts. That window is the plan. A date with no access agreement is a wish.
Planning around a floor that still works
Sandton and Rosebank towers rarely hand you an empty plate for a month. Phase the floor: one bay at a time, noisy work outside trading hours, and a route that staff can still walk. Dust and a ceiling opening next to a trading desk is how a fit-out loses the client who commissioned it.
Book the goods lift before the first carcass is loaded in Booysens. A reception panel that does not fit the lift is a panel we have to remake or crane, and neither belongs in week twelve.
Joinery and the shell are one drawing
Workstation spines, storage walls, and tea-point carcasses should share a board and a hardware family with the reception. Acoustic pods, if the open plan needs them, are planned with power and a position that does not block the escape route—see acoustic pods for open-plan offices. Loose furniture can come later. The built work cannot.
What to send
Send the floor plate, headcount, whether the floor stays live, and the date people must sit down. Photos of the ceiling and the lift help. Book a consultation and we will reply with scope questions and a programme shape, not a hard sell.
