Before You Call an Architect, You Need a Brief. Here Is How to Write One That Actually Drives a Good Fit-Out.

Most corporate office fit-outs in the Philippines start the same way: a company tours spaces, signs a lease, calls a designer, and says “we need it to look modern, fit around 80 people, and be done in three months.” That is not a brief. It is a request for a proposal that will come back wrong.

A design brief is the document that tells the architect or designer what problem they are actually solving. Not just the headcount. Not just the floor area. The way the team works, what they need the space to do, what is not working about the current office, and what a good outcome looks like to the people who will sit in it every day.

Without a brief, every decision in the design process is a guess. The designer guesses how many meeting rooms you need. They guess whether your team needs quiet zones or collaboration space. They guess what your brand should feel like in three dimensions. Some of those guesses will be right. The ones that are not right will cost you time and money to fix — if they get fixed at all.

A good brief is not long. It does not require a consultant to write. It requires one or two hours of honest thinking about how your company actually works, what the current space is failing at, and what you want people to feel when they walk in.

My position on this is direct: the quality of a fit-out is determined before design begins. The companies that get offices they love are the ones that spent time on the brief. The ones that say “just make it look good” get an office that looks good in the presentation and frustrates people in practice. The brief is where the design outcome is decided. Everything after that is execution.

60%

Proportion of fit-out changes requested during construction that could have been avoided with a more complete brief at the start. Changes during construction are the most expensive kind — materials have been ordered, walls are going up, and every revision carries a cost multiplier of two to five times what the same decision would have cost in the design phase. (Source: UODC project data, 2024–2026)

Section 1

What a design brief is — and what it is not

A design brief is a single document that gives the design team everything they need to make decisions on your behalf. It is not a mood board. It is not a list of finishes you like. It is not a floor plan.

A BRIEF IS…	A BRIEF IS NOT…
A description of how the team works and what they need from the space	A description of how the team works and what they need from the space
The problems the current office has and why they matter	A mood board or collection of images you like
A headcount breakdown by team and work type	A single number like ‘80 people’
A statement of what success looks like for people using the space	A budget figure with no context around what it should deliver
The constraints the designer needs to work within	An expectation that the designer will figure it out

A brief does not need to answer every design question. It needs to give the designer enough information to ask the right questions and make the right decisions when you are not in the room.

Section 2

The six sections every office design brief should have

These six sections cover what a designer needs to go from blank floor plate to a space that solves real problems. Each card below shows what to include, and the difference between a weak answer and a strong one.

SECTION 1  —  WHO YOU ARE AND HOW YOU WORK

Why it matters:  The designer needs to understand your organisation before they can design for it. A law firm and a tech company with the same headcount need completely different spaces.

What to include:  Company name, industry, and team structure. How decisions are made — hierarchically or collaboratively. Whether most work is independent, client-facing, or team-based. How often the whole team is in at the same time.

✗  Weak:  "We are a 60-person financial services company."

✓  Strong:  "We are a 60-person financial advisory firm. About 35 people are in on any given Tuesday. Work is mostly individual and confidential — phone calls, analysis, client reports. We have three senior partners who hold client meetings weekly. The team does not collaborate much across departments."

SECTION 2  —  WHAT IS NOT WORKING ABOUT THE CURRENT SPACE

Why it matters:  The best briefs are specific about pain. Generic requests for ‘better collaboration’ or ‘a more modern feel’ do not tell the designer what problem they are solving.

What to include:  List three to five specific problems people encounter daily. Include who is affected and how often. Include things that worked well in a previous space if relevant.

✗  Weak:  "The current office feels dated and people are not using it much."

✓  Strong:  "Meeting rooms are always fully booked by 9am. People take calls at their desks and disturb everyone around them. There is no space to have a private conversation without going to the pantry. New staff do not know where to sit on their first day because desk ownership is unclear."

SECTION 3  —  HEADCOUNT AND SPACE REQUIREMENTS

Why it matters:  A headcount number without context is almost useless. Designers need to know how that headcount actually uses the space across a typical week.

What to include:  Total headcount by team or function. Peak attendance (highest day of the week) and typical daily attendance. Number and type of meetings held per week. Any teams that work shifts, part-time, or remotely most of the time.

✗  Weak:  "80 people, 20 meeting rooms."

✓  Strong:  "80 total headcount. Peak Tuesday attendance is around 55 people. We have 4 senior leaders who each hold 3–5 meetings per week with 2–5 people. We have 2 large team meetings per month involving 30+ people. About 20 people are always remote and come in less than once a week."

SECTION 4  —  BUDGET AND TIMELINE

Why it matters:  An honest budget protects both sides. A designer who does not know the budget will present options that may be completely out of range, wasting everyone’s time and delaying the project.

What to include:  Total approved budget for the fit-out. Whether the budget includes FF&E (furniture, fixtures, and equipment) or just construction. Target move-in date and any hard deadlines (lease start, office closure, etc.).

✗  Weak:  "Budget is flexible. We want to move in around Q1."

✓  Strong:  "Total budget is ₱8 million, which includes construction and FF&E. Loose furniture (chairs, desks) has a separate budget of ₱2 million. We must be in the new office by March 15 because our current lease ends March 31. There is no flexibility on that date."

SECTION 5  —  BRAND AND CULTURE

Why it matters:  The physical space is where your brand becomes real for employees and visitors. Designers need guidance on what the company should feel like, not just what it should look like.

What to include:  How you want people to feel when they walk in. Words that describe your culture (three to five is enough). Brands or spaces you admire and why. Anything that is specifically off-brand or that you want to move away from.

✗  Weak:  "We want it to look modern and professional."

✓  Strong:  "We want visitors to feel that we are serious but approachable. Spaces we admire: the Netflix Singapore office for how it balances focus and social space; the WeWork model for flexibility. We are moving away from the closed-door, corner-office feel of our current space. Our brand colours are navy and gold and we want those referenced, not overwhelmed."

SECTION 6  —  CONSTRAINTS AND NON-NEGOTIABLES

Why it matters:  Every project has constraints the designer needs to know upfront. Discovering them mid-design causes delays and rework.

What to include:  Building fit-out manual restrictions (if already reviewed). Any equipment or technology that must be accommodated. IT or server room requirements. Accessibility requirements. Any rooms or zones that are fixed and cannot be moved.

✗  Weak:  "Standard office requirements apply."

✓  Strong:  "The building manual restricts work to evenings and weekends only. We need a server room of at least 10 sqm with dedicated aircon. Two of our team members use wheelchairs — every zone must be fully accessible. The reception counter from our current office was custom-made and must be reused."

Section 3

The three questions that make a brief sharper

If the six sections above feel like a lot, start with these three questions. They surface the information that most directly shapes design decisions.

  1    What does a bad day in this office look like?

Not a vague complaint about the space — a specific, concrete description of friction. "By 10am there are no meeting rooms. People are taking calls in the corridor. Two teams that need to work together sit on opposite sides of the floor and never interact.” That description tells a designer exactly what to solve. “The office doesn’t really work for us anymore” tells them nothing.

2    What would make people choose to come in when they do not have to?

In a hybrid environment, the office has to earn attendance. A brief that answers this honestly — “people come in when they have collaborative work, client meetings, or need a quiet space away from home” — tells the designer which zones to prioritise and which traditional elements (rows of assigned desks, for instance) can be reduced in favour of the spaces people are actually coming in for.

3    What should a visitor think about the company after spending an hour here?

The answer is usually one or two words — “credible”, “creative”, “serious but human”. That answer shapes material choices, lighting, reception design, and every small decision the designer makes when two options are otherwise equal. Without it, aesthetic choices are arbitrary. With it, they add up to a consistent experience.

The most useful thing I can tell a client preparing for a fit-out is that the brief protects them as much as it helps the designer. When the space is finished and something is not right, a brief tells you whether the designer missed the mark or whether the requirement was never stated. Without a brief, both sides are guessing who is responsible for the gap. With one, the answer is usually clear.

Section 4

Common brief mistakes and how to avoid them

✓  Writing what you want, not what you need. 

"We want a large boardroom" is a want. "We hold twelve-person leadership meetings every Monday and currently use an external venue because we have no suitable room" is a need. Design decisions made around needs produce better outcomes than ones made around wants.

✓  Leaving budget out of the brief. 

A designer who does not know the budget cannot make cost-conscious decisions. They will present options they believe are appropriate — which may be significantly over or under what you have. An honest budget range is one of the most useful things in a brief.

✓  Describing the output instead of the outcome. 

"We want an open-plan office with collaboration zones" is an output — it tells the designer what to build. "We want our team to interact more across departments because right now people only talk to their own team" is an outcome — it tells the designer what to achieve. The designer may find a better way to achieve the outcome than the output you described.

✓  Writing the brief without asking the people who use the space. 

The person commissioning the fit-out is often not the person sitting in it every day. A 30-minute conversation with five or six team members — what they find frustrating, what they wish they had, what they would bring from the old office — produces better brief content than any number of management assumptions.

✓  Treating the brief as final. 

A brief is a starting document, not a contract. It should evolve through the early design phase as the designer asks questions and you discover things you had not thought about. A brief that cannot be updated is a brief that will be wrong.

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If you handed your current office floor plan to a designer today with no explanation — no description of how the team works, what is frustrating, what the budget is, what success looks like — what would they design? Would it be the office your team actually needs? Or the office that looks right on a floor plan?

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TALK TO UODC ARCHITECTS

We help corporate clients build fit-out briefs before design begins — and then design the space around what the brief actually says. If you are planning a fit-out and are not sure where to start, a free consultation is the right first step.

Book a Free Consultation → www.uodc-architects.com/start-your-project

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UODC Architects  ·  Architecture · Interior Design · Design-Build  ·  Metro Manila  ·  uodc-architects.com