The lease plan is not the services plan
A lease boundary tells you what area is being offered. It does not tell you whether the area can support the work planned inside it. Before a tenant commits to a fit-out, the review should connect the floor area to occupancy, equipment, hours of use, cooling demand, ventilation, power, water, drainage, fire systems, acoustics, and access for maintenance. Those relationships are where the expensive surprises live.
A Vastu conversation may begin with entrance, orientation, or zone questions. That can be a useful way to hear what the occupier values. It should then become a measured brief. A south-east electrical room still needs safe clearances and heat management. A north-east water feature still needs a drainage route, isolation valve, waterproofing, and someone willing to maintain it.
Confirm what the landlord actually provides
Ask for the base-build drawings, plant schedules, equipment capacities, controls description, riser locations, fire strategy, emergency-power assumptions, and operating hours. Confirm which services are included in the rent, which are metered, which are shared, and which require landlord approval. A brochure statement such as fully air-conditioned is not enough to size a tenant layout.
Record the boundary between landlord and tenant work. Who provides fresh air to the suite? Who owns the controls? Who can access the ceiling? Who pays for an additional electrical load or a new condensate route? Who responds when a leak affects a server room? Put the answers in a schedule with drawing references. The schedule becomes more useful than a collection of optimistic emails.
Test the occupancy and equipment assumptions
Start with people and tasks. Count expected occupants by zone and by peak period. Separate desk work, meeting rooms, reception, kitchens, storage, specialist rooms, and spaces with unusual heat or moisture loads. Then list equipment, operating hours, plug loads, battery charging, printers, server cabinets, display walls, and any process that changes the air or temperature.
Do not spread a single average across the whole floor. A small room with concentrated equipment can need more cooling and access than a larger open area. A meeting room may be lightly occupied for much of the day and still need a reliable ventilation response when full. The fit-out plan should show how the services respond to the work, not merely how many seats fit on the drawing.
Look above the ceiling and behind the finishes
A visually clean office can conceal low ceiling voids, crowded services, blocked dampers, inaccessible valves, and routes that cannot be altered without affecting another tenant. Survey representative bays and record slab-to-slab height, ceiling zone, beams, risers, access panels, lighting, sprinkler heads, smoke devices, and the path for new cables or pipes.
Maintenance access needs a place in the brief. If an air-handling component, valve, filter, detector, or data cabinet can only be reached by moving furniture or removing a finished ceiling, the operating cost has already been designed in. Keep the access route compatible with the tenant’s security and working hours. A service that cannot be reached is a future interruption.
Check water, drainage, and wet-room risk
Kitchens, toilets, tea points, humidifiers, planters, cooling systems, and decorative water elements all need a complete water story. Trace the supply, isolation, discharge, overflow, condensate, access, and leak detection. Check whether the slab, waterproofing, floor build-up, and adjacent tenancy can tolerate the proposal. Do not approve a wet feature from a plan symbol alone.
Ask how a failure will be found and contained. A small leak above a finished meeting room can damage ceilings, lighting, equipment, and the tenant relationship before anyone locates the source. Put shut-off points in reachable positions, keep inspection panels usable, and record the response contact. The point is not to remove every feature. It is to make the feature governable.
Turn findings into a lease decision
The final review should separate confirmed capacity, assumptions, exclusions, costs, and approvals. A simple red-amber-green register can show which issue is safe to proceed, which needs a landlord response, and which requires a redesign. Attach the evidence and the person responsible for closing each item.
A good lease decision is not necessarily yes or no. It may be yes with a service upgrade, yes with a reduced occupancy, yes after a survey, or no because the base building cannot support the operational brief. That clarity protects the occupier and gives the design team a usable starting point. The compass can stay on the drawing. It should not be the only thing on it.
Ask for a measured answer to every assumption
For each service, write the assumption, the source, the person who confirmed it, and the test still required. If the cooling number comes from a landlord schedule, check whether it applies to the suite, the peak condition, and the intended operating hours. If a power allowance is shared, identify the diversity and the approval path.
This record prevents a design team from carrying a vague promise through several stages. It also makes the cost of uncertainty visible. A small survey fee before lease commitment is easier to manage than a redesign after the deposit, furniture order, and construction programme.
Protect future change
Tenants change teams, equipment, partitions, and working hours. Keep spare capacity or a realistic upgrade route where the business needs it. Reserve riser and ceiling access, document service zones, and avoid placing permanent rooms over the only practical route to a valve or cable tray.
Future flexibility is not an excuse for an oversized plant system. It is a clear statement of what can change, what cannot, and what evidence is needed before a change. The lease review should identify that boundary while both parties can still negotiate.
Make the decision legible
Summarise confirmed systems, open risks, landlord obligations, tenant works, approval gates, capital cost, operating cost, and the date for closure. Let the project team see which items can be designed and which must be solved by the building owner.
A responsible Vastu brief can sit beside this decision record. It can explain the client’s spatial priorities without hiding a capacity gap. The right property is the one that supports the work and the agreed constraints, not simply the one with the most attractive entrance.
Review the first operating cycle
After the recommendation is put into use, review a lease review should check building services before fit-out under ordinary conditions and one less convenient condition. Check what people actually do, which control is hardest to follow, and whether the owner can complete the stated inspection or response. A short review after use catches the small failures that a polished handover can hide.
Record the observation with a date, location, condition, and action. If the result is good, keep the evidence. If it is not, change the route, detail, instruction, or owner and set a new review date. The purpose is not to create paperwork for its own sake. It is to connect the published guidance to a building that continues to operate and change.
Keep the evidence register readable
The final record should let another person understand the scope without reconstructing the project from scattered messages. Keep the current drawing, source notes, site observations, assumptions, approvals, unresolved items, and owner contacts together. Mark the date and version on each item, and do not leave an old plan where a future operator may mistake it for the live one.
That discipline also keeps the cultural and technical parts of the decision honest. A traditional interpretation may explain a preference, while measurements and qualified reviews explain feasibility. When the two are recorded side by side with their proper limits, the guidance remains useful without making a promise the evidence cannot support.
Lease services checklist
| System | Questions before commitment |
|---|---|
| Ventilation and cooling | What capacity, controls, operating hours, and tenant alterations are included? |
| Power and data | What load, redundancy, risers, backup, and access are available? |
| Water and drainage | Where are supply, isolation, discharge, condensate, overflow, and leak controls? |
| Fire and access | Which routes, devices, doors, clearances, and approvals constrain the fit-out? |
FAQ
What is the first document to request for a leased office?
Request the base-build services drawings and equipment schedules, then verify them with a site survey. The drawing and the building may differ.
Can a tenant add cooling capacity later?
Sometimes, but the answer depends on plant, distribution, power, controls, structure, approvals, and cost. Test the assumption before signing.
Why inspect maintenance access during a lease review?
Poor access turns routine inspection into disruption, safety risk, or unfinished work. It is cheaper to identify the route before ceilings and furniture are fixed.
Does a Vastu review replace a building-services survey?
No. It can add a cultural or spatial layer to the brief. Mechanical, electrical, fire, drainage, and accessibility checks still govern feasibility.
What should be attached to a lease decision?
Attach the measured plan, services schedule, assumptions, exclusions, costs, approvals, and an action register with named owners.
Sources and verification notes
The factual building-performance and safety statements above were checked against the following public references on 15 September 2026. Traditional interpretations are presented as interpretations, not measured causal claims.