Location strategy
Choose the area before you fall for the building.
A shortlist built without a location view is a list of buildings someone else wanted to show you. We narrow the geography first, using the criteria that actually govern how the business runs.
Comparison framework
Six criteria, scored the same way twice.
Candidate areas are assessed against a consistent set of criteria, weighted to the business, so the comparison holds up when the decision reaches the board.
| Criterion | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Workforce | Where your people live now, where the talent you need to hire lives, and what a move would do to both. |
| Access | Transit, road network, commute times by direction, and the practical difference between map distance and travel time. |
| Operations | Deliveries, servicing, customer visits, equipment and anything the site has to physically accommodate. |
| Cost | Occupancy cost in context: rent, service charge, rates or local taxes, parking, fit-out and moving cost. |
| Supply | How much space of the right type actually exists in each candidate area, and how quickly it moves. |
| Flexibility | Whether the area gives you room to grow, contract or re-let without a second relocation. |
Stay or move
The current location is an option, and it should be tested like one.
Relocation is expensive and disruptive, so the incumbent site enters the comparison on equal terms. Sometimes the answer is to stay and renegotiate. That is a legitimate outcome of the work, not a failure of it.
- Commute impact by team
- Operational continuity
- Cost of moving, fully counted
- Timing against lease events
Honest limits
We use the data that exists, and we say when it does not.
Location work draws on published transport, planning and market information, plus what we can verify directly. Where evidence is thin for a particular area or property type, the report says so rather than presenting an estimate as a finding. We do not publish market statistics we cannot stand behind.
Next step
Start with the map, not the shortlist.
Tell us where the business operates today and what the next few years look like. We will set out how a location comparison would be run for that requirement.