When your business has to undergo extensive renovations, there is the fear that you'll have to be closed for the duration of the work. This is an understandable fear because a closed business, be it an office or factory, usually equals lost money. But it may be possible to keep your business open, or at least mostly open. The bad news is that there's no one answer that will apply to everyone, but the good news is that the situation is a lot more flexible than you think, with more compromises available than you might realise. 

It Really Depends on What's Being Done

Whether or not you can keep your business open depends on what's being done. Even with extensive renovations, there can be sections that you keep open. The renovations may impact wiring, plumbing, the roof of the building, or other parts that would make it difficult to keep everything open as if nothing were going on, but other renovations are easier to do while others work on the property. For example, if you're redecorating and adding new carpet in offices and new flooring in the factory, you may be able to shift people's work locations for a couple of days.

Dealing With Noise, Dust, and Other Pollutants

The two factors you need to look at are whether the work will interfere directly and physically with the work (e.g., gutting an entire building) and what the noise, dust, and other pollution emanating from the construction will be. Let's say you need to tear down several walls, and the problem is that this will generate a lot of noise and dust. If there's a way to isolate the construction that kicks up a lot of dust, for example, then all you have to do is clear out that section and let the construction company set up barriers to keep the dust out of the rest of the building. You could move people in the immediate vicinity to another location to avoid noise.

If the construction involves something like lead paint remediation, however, you'd want everyone cleared out of the building even though the work involved only removing paint.

Going for a Compromise

Chances are already that you'd need to close off some sections of your worksite during the construction, but if you can simply move people to another part of the building, you can remain open during the renovations. Another potential compromise is to see what parts of the construction there are that require people to avoid the area and find out if there's a way to group all those parts of the construction together. Then, you may have to close, but you'd be closed for a shorter time as all that work is taken care of in the same time frame.

When you know what needs to be done, you and the construction company can figure out what needs to be closed, who needs to be moved, and what you can do to stay at least partially open so that your business keeps running. Industrial construction and renovations are very common, yet most businesses either don't have to close, or they have to close for only a short time. So, things look good for your business.

For more information, contact an industrial construction company.