The Real Cost of Office Space

One of the challenges to any OBC operator in marketing to clients who have not used a business centre before is the inevitable "apples and oranges" comparison. The prospective client asks for the cost of the business centre licence on a per square foot or square metre basis and compares that with the per square foot cost of conventional office space, leaving the centre manager to explain that this is not comparing like with like.

Over the course of the last few years a number of operators have developed cost comparison tools designed to deal with this problem by calculating the true cost of office space. While these tools are helpful, they tend to be a little superficial and could be dismissed by the client as a marketing ploy.

The solution for the business centre operator is to get the prospective client to use an independent occupancy cost calculator prepared by a body which has nothing to do with the serviced office industry. By far the best such in the world is the Investment Property Databank Cost Code, the 5th edition of which was launched today.

This Code provides a transparent basis for measurement, comparison and benchmarking of office costs. The new edition of the Code contains a cleaner distinction between Opex and Capex, a new cost measure to capture IT costs and three new case studies from the Office of Government Commerce; AXA Group and Centrica.

The Code has always contained a translation of its standards into other institutional standards, principally the BOMA Chart of Accounts; the NEN Terms of Facilities and the RICS Code of Measuring Practice and the new edition has a much improved mapping for this purpose.

The IPD Cost Code is available to download free of charge at www.ipdoccupiers.com/costcode.

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