Commercial Tenant Improvements in Richmond

Tenant improvement work covers everything between a bare or dated commercial space and one that's ready to trade: demising and partition walls, ceilings and lighting, HVAC and electrical distribution, washrooms, millwork, storefront elements, and finishes. Unlike a home renovation, the constraints come from three directions at once - the building code, your landlord's base-building standards and approval requirements, and a lease clock that's usually already running. A build-out that ignores any of the three gets expensive fast.

We run TI projects the way they need to be run: one point of contact who coordinates the landlord's requirements, the permits, and the trades, with the owners personally managing the site so decisions get made same-day instead of next-meeting. The fixed-price scope is built from your drawings - or developed with your designer - and the schedule is priced with the same honesty as the number, including after-hours or phased work where your business needs to keep operating. When a change-of-use or health-authority requirement applies, it goes into the plan at the start, not into a change order at week six.

We work with business owners across Richmond fitting out a new lease, franchisees building to spec on a deadline, and clinics and restaurants whose mechanical and plumbing scope is the project. If your fixturing period is already burning, the fastest thing you can do is get a complete scope and a real schedule on paper.

Long before a permit application exists, your lease has made construction decisions for you. The work letter - usually a schedule attached to the lease - divides the project into landlord's work and tenant's work, and defines what condition the space arrives in: anywhere from bare shell to a finished 'vanilla box' with washrooms and base systems in place. Two identical-looking spaces can carry wildly different build-out scopes depending on that one document, which is why we read it before we price anything.

The lease also governs approval. Almost every commercial lease requires the landlord's consent for alterations, and landlords commonly attach conditions: drawings reviewed by their base-building engineers, proof of the contractor's insurance, and compliance with the building's rules for elevators and common areas. That review runs alongside the municipal permit, not instead of it - and it takes real weeks of its own.

In an occupied building, when you can work matters as much as what you build. Every municipality sets its own permitted construction hours under its noise bylaw, and buildings layer their own rules on top - noisy, dusty work like demolition and core drilling routinely gets pushed to evenings and weekends. A schedule that ignores those windows is a wish, not a plan.

The BC Building Code sorts every commercial space into an occupancy classification - offices and clinics in one group, retail in another, restaurants and other assembly uses in another again. Moving a space between groups, like turning a retail unit into a cafe or an office into a clinic, needs a permit and a code analysis even if you never move a wall. The code cares about what happens inside the space, not just what gets built.

A change of use commonly pulls the space up to current standards for its new life: ventilation sized for the new occupancy, fire separations and exiting rechecked against a different set of assumptions, washroom counts revisited, and accessibility brought toward today's requirements - with the exact scope of upgrades, as of mid-2026, worked out with the building official under the newest edition of the code.

The practical takeaway comes before the lease is signed: if the space you're considering in Richmond was last used as something different from what you're planning, price the classification change as part of choosing it. The cheapest unit on the block can quietly be the most expensive one to open - finding that out is a walkthrough, not a mid-build surprise.

If your business serves food, a second regulator reviews your project: the regional health authority - Vancouver Coastal Health or Fraser Health, depending on the city. Their environmental health officers must approve your floor plans before construction begins, and the finished space is inspected against those approved plans before an operating permit is granted. Build first and ask later, and you risk rebuilding a finished kitchen. Personal service businesses - salons, tattoo studios, aesthetics - go through their own plan review and inspection as well.

A liquor-primary licence is its own long road: the provincial process regularly takes the better part of a year and requires floor plans with a certified occupant load stamped by the local authority. If licensed service is part of your plan, that application starts when the lease is signed - not when the paint dries.

At the finish line sits the approval everything else feeds: the occupancy permit. No commercial space legally opens without one, and it is issued only after final inspections confirm the life-safety systems, fire separations, and accessibility work are complete. We plan every tenant improvement backwards from that moment, with municipal permits, landlord approvals, and health-authority clocks running in parallel - because opening day is the deadline that pays the rent.

Most tenant improvements need a building permit, and a change of use - say retail to restaurant, or office to clinic - triggers a fuller review that can bring accessibility and life-safety upgrades into scope. Electrical and plumbing work is permitted separately through licensed trades, restaurants and clinics may need health-authority sign-off, and your landlord's consent and base-building engineer reviews often sit alongside the municipal process in Richmond. We sequence all of it against your lease's fixturing period, because a permit surprise at week four costs more than the permit ever did.

Permits run through the City of Richmond, and the delta ground adds considerations other cities don't have: flood construction levels affect how low habitable space can sit, and anything changing the building's relationship to grade gets looked at through that lens. Townhome and condo projects need strata approval alongside the city permit, and Richmond's large strata inventory means that second track applies to a big share of projects here. We manage both approvals in parallel and build the review window into the schedule from the first conversation.

Richmond runs permitting through its Building Approvals Department, and as of mid-2026 most applications start online in the MyPermit portal, reached through a MyRichmond account. The portal walks you through the application step by step and shows only the requirements that apply to your project type. Gas, plumbing and sprinkler permits go through the same portal, and the permits counter at City Hall remains open for anyone who prefers to apply in person.

Two practical details are worth knowing before you start. The city will not release a permit until the contractor's business licence is active, so that paperwork needs to be in order early. And inspections are self-serve: they are booked through Richmond's online inspection system using the permit number and access code printed on the permit itself, with requests made by evening generally scheduled for the next business day. We sequence those bookings so nothing gets covered up before sign-off.