October 2, 2026
How to Plan an Office Renovation in Toronto in 2026
An office renovation in Toronto runs in a fixed order: work out what the space needs to do, check what the building and the lease allow, set a budget, design, get the landlord’s approval and a building permit, tender, build, and move in. Construction alone for a full interior fit-out in the GTA runs about $110 to $265 per square foot in 2026, depending on the class of building, before design, furniture, IT, moving, HST and contingency are added. Most of the schedule, and most of the money, is decided before a contractor sets foot in the space.
This guide is written from the owner’s side of the table, for an office manager, business owner or small landlord who doesn’t do this every year. It covers the planning sequence, a budget built from public figures, Toronto’s permit rules for interior work, the ways to hire the people who build it, and how to compare the prices that come back.
How to plan an office renovation, step by step
A 2,000 square foot refresh and three full floors go through the same stages in the same order.
- Write down what the space has to do. Headcount today and in three years, how many people come in on a typical day, meeting rooms, storage, a kitchen, and anything special like a server room or a client reception. This is the brief everything after it is measured against.
- Check the building and the lease. Walk the space with someone who can read it: the HVAC, sprinklers, electrical capacity, washrooms, ceiling and floor condition. Read the lease for what you’re allowed to change, the landlord’s approval process, the building’s rules for contractors, and what you have to remove at the end of the term. If you’re leasing new space, the tenant improvement allowance and the landlord’s work schedule belong in this step too. If it’s a store rather than an office, see how a retail store build-out works in Toronto.
- Set a first budget. Before any design, set a number for the whole project, not only the construction. The table further down shows what goes in it.
- Hire the designer. An interior designer or architect, usually with mechanical and electrical engineers behind them, takes the brief to a layout, then to drawings a contractor can price and the City can approve.
- Test the design against the budget. Get a cost check at the layout stage, while changes are still cheap. Adjust the scope or the budget, but make the two meet.
- Get the landlord’s approval. In a multi-tenant building the landlord reviews the drawings before you apply for a permit.
- Apply for the building permit. Most interior renovations need one. More on Toronto’s rules below.
- Tender and award. Send the same drawings to three or four contractors, compare the prices properly, and sign a contract.
- Order long-lead items. Mechanical units, electrical panels, custom millwork, glass partitions and some furniture can take longer to arrive than the build itself.
- Build. With the contractor, the landlord’s building rules and, if you’re staying in the space, a plan for your staff.
- Commission, inspect and move in. Final inspections, HVAC balancing, IT and AV set up, furniture delivered, deficiencies listed and fixed.
- Close out. Release holdback, collect warranties and as-built drawings, and claim any allowance before its deadline.
The decisions you owe at each stage
Each stage needs something from you, and a late answer at stage 5 tends to show up as a change order at stage 10. More on that in the quiet cost of slow decisions.
| Stage | What you decide | Who usually helps |
|---|---|---|
| Brief | Headcount, how people will work, what rooms you need | Your leadership team, sometimes a workplace consultant |
| Building and lease | Whether the space can do what you need, and what the landlord will pay for | Your lawyer, a builder or project manager, the landlord |
| First budget | The total you’re prepared to spend, including contingency | Your finance lead, a cost consultant or project manager |
| Design | Layout sign-off, then finishes, then furniture | Designer, engineers |
| Cost check | What stays and what goes if the design is over budget | Designer, cost consultant |
| Tender | How the work is bought and from whom | Project manager, designer |
| Construction | Answers to site questions, approval of changes | Project manager, designer |
| Move-in | Acceptance of the space, the deficiency list | Project manager, your IT and facilities people |
One person on your side needs to own these decisions and have the authority to make them. On a small project that’s often the office manager. On a larger one, ask whether that person has the time, or whether a project manager working for you should carry it.
What an office renovation costs in Toronto
Construction is only part of the cost. The budget has seven or eight lines, and the ones outside construction are the ones people forget.
The construction cost
The most widely used public benchmark in Canada is Altus Group’s 2026 Canadian Cost Guide, based on data as at January 31, 2026. For interior fit-out in the Greater Toronto Area, it gives:
| Fit-out type (GTA, 2026) | Hard cost per sq ft |
|---|---|
| Interior fit-out, Class B office | $110 to $150 |
| Interior fit-out, Class A office | $160 to $265 |
Altus states that these are hard construction costs only, at average-quality finishes unless stated otherwise, excluding GST and HST. Design fees, permits, furniture, IT, moving and contingency all sit outside them.
A light refresh that keeps the walls, ceiling and mechanical system can cost a fraction of these figures. A renovation that moves walls, reworks the HVAC and rebuilds washrooms lands inside them or above them. Where yours falls depends on a few things you can find out early:
- How much of the existing space stays. Reusing walls, ceilings and doors in good shape costs less than replacing them.
- The mechanical system. Moving walls changes airflow, and closed meeting rooms often need their own supply and return. This line often moves most between the first budget and the tender.
- The building. Class A towers usually have stricter standards for materials, required trades for building systems, and more after-hours work, all of which cost more than a Class B or suburban building.
- Finishes. Millwork, glass, feature ceilings and specialty flooring are where design choices show up in the price.
Building the whole budget
Below is the structure we’d use for a first budget. Only the construction line has a reliable public benchmark, so for the rest the table names what drives the number.
| Budget line | What’s in it | What drives the number |
|---|---|---|
| Construction | Demolition, walls, ceilings, floors, doors, millwork, mechanical, electrical, plumbing, sprinkler and fire alarm changes, the contractor’s site costs and fee | Scope, building class, existing conditions, after-hours work |
| Design and engineering | Interior designer or architect, mechanical and electrical engineers, sometimes structural | Size and complexity; often quoted as a fixed fee per stage |
| Permits and approvals | Building permit, landlord’s review fee | Area of work; the landlord’s fee schedule |
| IT, AV and security | Cabling, network equipment, meeting room AV, access control, cameras | Number of rooms with AV, whether you reuse equipment |
| Furniture | Workstations, chairs, meeting tables, soft seating, storage | Headcount, new vs reused, lead times |
| Moving and temporary space | Movers, temporary space if you can’t stay, decommissioning the old office | Whether you move, and how far |
| Project management | Your own project manager or owner’s representative, if you use one | Size of project, how much time your own team can give it |
| Contingency | Money for what you don’t know yet | Design stage, age of the building, how complete the drawings are |
| HST | 13% on most of the above | Recoverable as input tax credits if you’re a registrant |
A worked example shows how quickly the lines add up. Take an 8,000 square foot Class B office. At Altus’s range, construction alone is $880,000 to $1,200,000. HST at 13% (Canada Revenue Agency) adds $114,400 to $156,000, though an HST registrant will usually recover it. The permit for that area, about 743 square metres at the City’s 2026 rate for offices, is around $9,250. Design, IT, furniture, moving and contingency then sit on top, and on many office projects furniture and IT together are a large share of the total.
For contingency, the right amount depends on how far the design has progressed and how old the building is. Our article on how much contingency is enough sets out benchmarks by design stage; for a renovation, start at the higher end of each range, because ceilings and walls hide things until they’re opened.
How long an office renovation takes
Contractor websites quote construction time, which for a straightforward floor can be a matter of weeks. The brief, design, landlord review, permit and tender come first, and on a small office they usually take longer than the build.
What sets the pace before construction
- Design. The layout usually takes a couple of rounds, then come permit and tender drawings. How fast you answer the designer’s questions is part of the timeline.
- Landlord review. Most landlords want to see drawings before a permit application goes in, and their comments can send drawings back to the designer.
- The building permit. The City’s review times are covered below. Examiner comments mean revisions and a resubmission.
- Tender. Contractors need time to price with their trades; rushing them tends to bring higher prices or more exclusions.
- Long-lead items. Some equipment and furniture takes longer to arrive than the build itself, so order early.
What sets the pace during construction
The build is shaped as much by the conditions as by the amount of work. An occupied building, with noisy work after hours, booked elevators and a shared dock, is slower than an empty floor, and phasing so staff can stay adds a setup and a move per phase. At the end, inspections, HVAC balancing, fire alarm verification and IT installation all happen before people move in. Give that stretch its own place in the schedule.
If you’re setting a move-in date tied to a lease expiry, set it from a schedule that someone has built backward from that date, step by step. Our article on what developers get wrong about schedules explains how to tell a schedule you can rely on from one that was drawn to fit a date.
Permits and the Building Code in Toronto
Most office renovations in Toronto need a building permit. Moving or adding walls, changing exits, altering the sprinkler or fire alarm system, and changing plumbing or mechanical systems are all work the City reviews. Work like painting or replacing carpet usually doesn’t need one, but the rule turns on what the work involves, not what it’s called, so ask your designer to confirm early.
Which Building Code applies
Ontario’s new Building Code took effect on January 1, 2025. Ontario Regulation 163/24 adopts the National Building Code of Canada 2020 with Ontario’s amendments, so a renovation designed now falls under it, and something that passed on your last project may need to change.
What the City needs
The City’s guide to interior alterations in non-residential buildings lists what an application includes: floor plans showing existing and proposed uses, sections, assembly specifications, and information about the building’s life safety systems. Drawings carry the designer’s registration and qualification numbers and signature, so a qualified designer, architect or engineer prepares them.
Fees are charged on the area of work. From January 1, 2026, the City’s rate for Group A, B and D occupancies is $12.45 per square metre. Offices are Group D.
How long the City takes
The City’s building permit review streams set review times for complete applications: 15 business days in the small building stream, 20 business days for large buildings and 30 for complex ones. An application isn’t complete without a Zoning Applicable Law Certificate, and the City states there’s no review time frame for incomplete applications.
Smaller office renovations may qualify for the City’s Express Services, where the City aims to review an eligible application within 3 business days of taking it in. For interior alterations to business, office and retail spaces, the criteria are an area up to 600 square metres (about 6,450 square feet), no change in use, no change in patron area, and no active permit for the building shell. If your project is close to that size, it’s worth asking your designer whether the scope can be drawn to fit.
When the scope gets bigger
Changing the use of the space (an office becoming a clinic), adding occupants beyond what the exits were designed for, or touching structure all bring more review, and sometimes zoning questions. Raise them before the lease is signed or the budget is set.
Choosing how to hire: stipulated price, construction management or design-build
The delivery method decides who designs, who builds and how the price is set. Canada’s standard contracts come from the Canadian Construction Documents Committee (CCDC), and they name the three common routes.
Stipulated price (design, then tender)
You hire a designer, the designer produces complete drawings, and contractors bid a fixed price to build them. The contract is usually a CCDC 2, the Stipulated Price Contract, currently in its 2020 edition.
This is the most common route for office renovations. You get an independent designer working for you, competing prices on the same drawings, and a fixed price for the scope they show. The trade-off is time, since design finishes before the tender starts, and the price is only as complete as the drawings.
Construction management
A construction manager joins during design, advises on cost and schedule, then tenders the work trade by trade, under CCDC 5A or 5B (both in 2025 editions). It suits large, multi-floor or phased renovations; on a single floor it’s usually more structure than the project needs. Our article on how an owner’s rep differs from a construction manager goes into the two CCDC 5 forms in more detail.
Design-build
One firm designs and builds, for one price. CCDC 14 is the design-build stipulated price contract, with a 2026 edition now published. It can be quick for a straightforward refresh, with one point of contact. You give up the independent check of a separate designer and competing prices on the same drawings, so write a detailed brief at the start; what isn’t written down is the design-builder’s to decide.
How to choose
| Stipulated price | Construction management | Design-build | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who designs | Your designer | Your designer | The design-builder |
| When the price is fixed | At tender, on complete drawings | Trade by trade, as packages are tendered | At contract, on the brief and early design |
| Best suited to | Most office renovations | Large, phased or fast-tracked work | Simple, well-defined refreshes |
| What you need on your side | Someone to run the tender and manage the build | An experienced owner or representative to manage many contracts | A clear, detailed brief |
| CCDC form | CCDC 2 | CCDC 5A or 5B | CCDC 14 |
Some landlords will also build the space turnkey, which is simple but gives you less control over design and price. Whichever route you take, our five questions to ask before you sign a construction contract is a good place to start.
How to compare office renovation bids
When the tender closes, the totals usually can’t be compared yet. Each contractor has read the drawings a little differently, excluded different things and assumed different conditions. The job is to make the prices describe the same project first.
What a fixed price covers, and what it doesn’t
A stipulated price covers the work shown on the drawings and described in the specifications, built under the conditions the contract describes. It doesn’t cover:
- Things that aren’t on the drawings. If the designer didn’t show it, the contractor didn’t price it.
- Conditions nobody could see. What’s above the ceiling, inside the walls or under the floor, unless the contract puts that risk on the contractor and they’ve priced it.
- Changes you make. New rooms, different finishes, added outlets, a moved wall.
- Items listed as exclusions or by others. Furniture, cabling, AV, security, appliances and signage are often excluded or left to separate contractors.
- Allowances beyond their amount. If the bid carries an allowance of a set amount for an item not yet designed, the final cost is whatever the item actually costs.
Our guide to reading a construction estimate covers exclusions and allowances in more detail, and where change orders actually come from explains the gap between a fixed price and a final cost.
A checklist for levelling the bids
Put the bids side by side and work through these before you look at the totals:
- Exclusions and qualifications. List every one, for every bidder, and price the ones that matter to you so each bid is complete.
- Allowances. Compare the amounts each bidder carries for the same items. A low allowance makes a bid look cheaper without being cheaper.
- Scope gaps. Check that each bidder has included every trade, especially sprinkler, fire alarm, controls and any trades the landlord requires you to use.
- After-hours work. Check how many hours of evening and weekend work each bidder has assumed, and whether that matches the building’s rules.
- Schedule. Compare each bidder’s duration and any conditions on it, such as permit timing or the arrival of long-lead items.
- Site costs and fee. Supervision, protection of common areas, waste removal, elevator bookings and the contractor’s fee. A thin line here can mean the bidder hasn’t understood the building.
- Unit prices and markups for changes. The rates each bidder will charge for added work, since there will be some.
- Insurance, bonding and the landlord’s requirements. Whether each bidder meets them, and whether the cost is included.
Once levelled, the lowest total is often still the right choice, and now you know what it includes. If one bid is far below the others, ask the contractor to walk you through it before signing; it may be a better approach or a misread drawing.
Ontario rules that sit inside the contract
Two parts of Ontario’s Construction Act shape how you pay. You hold back 10% of the value of the work until the lien period has passed (section 22). And once you receive a proper invoice, you have 28 days to pay it unless you give notice of non-payment within 14 days (section 6.4). Build both into your cash flow and your approval process, so invoices can be reviewed and paid on time.
Renovating an occupied office building
Most office renovations in Toronto happen in buildings where other tenants are working, often in space the business is still using. It’s the part of the cost and schedule most often underestimated.
The landlord’s building rules
Every multi-tenant building has rules for contractors, usually in a tenant handbook or design criteria manual. Expect some version of these:
- Approved and required trades. Work on the sprinkler system, fire alarm, building automation and sometimes electrical distribution often has to be done by trades the landlord names.
- Hours for noisy work. Core drilling, demolition and anything that carries through the slab is usually limited to evenings and weekends.
- Elevators and the loading dock. Bookings for deliveries and waste removal, often outside business hours, and protection of the elevator cab and corridors.
- Fire and life safety. Procedures for any work that takes part of the fire alarm or sprinkler system out of service, and who has to be notified.
- The landlord’s fees. For reviewing drawings, supervising work on building systems and sometimes for after-hours services such as security or HVAC.
Get the handbook before the tender, give it to every bidder, and check that their prices reflect it.
The City’s noise rules
The City’s construction noise rules under Municipal Code Chapter 591 prohibit clearly audible construction noise from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. on weekdays, before 9 a.m. and after 7 p.m. on Saturdays, and all day on Sundays and statutory holidays, unless a noise exemption permit applies. In a mixed-use building or one with residential neighbours, the City’s limits and the landlord’s after-hours rules can pull in opposite directions, so settle the working hours with the landlord before the schedule is set.
Asbestos and designated substances
Older office buildings may contain asbestos. Under Ontario Regulation 278/05, before requesting tenders for the alteration or repair of a building, the owner must have a report prepared on asbestos-containing material that is likely to be disturbed, and must give a copy to any prospective constructor (O. Reg. 278/05, s. 10). In a leased building, ask the landlord for their designated substance report early and include it in the tender documents. If suspect material turns up that isn’t in the report, the contractor must notify the Ministry of Labour and the owner immediately (s. 10(8)), and work in that area usually pauses.
Staying in the space while you renovate
If your team can’t move out, the work is phased: part of the floor is closed off and built while people work in the rest, then everyone moves. It’s common, but each phase needs dust and noise separation, temporary walls, sometimes temporary power and data, and a move, so bring your IT team in from the start. The alternatives are temporary space, working from home for a period, or after-hours work with the space reopened each morning. Decide before the design is finished, because it changes the drawings, the tender and the schedule.
Frequently asked questions
How much does it cost to renovate an office in Toronto?
Altus Group’s 2026 Canadian Cost Guide puts a full interior fit-out in the GTA at $110 to $150 per square foot for Class B office space and $160 to $265 for Class A, for construction only, excluding HST. Design, permits, IT, furniture, moving and contingency come on top. A light refresh that keeps the walls and mechanical systems can cost much less than a full fit-out.
How long does an office renovation take?
Plan for the work before construction to take at least as long as the construction itself. The City aims to review eligible small interior alterations within 3 business days through Express Services; complete applications in the standard streams take 15 to 30 business days, and revisions add to that.
Do I need a permit to renovate an office in Toronto?
Usually, yes. Moving walls, changing exits, and altering sprinklers, fire alarm, plumbing or mechanical systems all need a building permit; painting and new carpet typically don’t. The City needs drawings from a qualified designer and a fee of $12.45 per square metre for offices in 2026.
Can we keep working in the office during the renovation?
Often, yes, by phasing the work so part of the floor is built while staff use the rest, and by doing the noisiest work after hours. It adds cost and time, because each phase needs separation, protection and a move. Decide early, since it changes the drawings, the contractor’s price and the schedule.
Where to start
The most useful first steps are a written brief, a walk-through with someone who can read the building and the lease, and a first budget with every line in it. Together they tell you whether the project fits the money and time you have, while it’s still easy to change.
Our construction project management work for office renovations starts there, then runs the design, permit, tender and build so your team can keep running the business. We bring more than 20 years of experience across office, residential, retail and industrial work, built at PCL Constructors and Oxford Properties. In Toronto that includes tenant fit-ups and capital work across Cadillac Fairview’s downtown office towers, the revitalization of the TD North Tower while it stayed fully occupied, and the Mattamy Homes headquarters fit-up. You can see more of that experience on our sectors page, and we’re glad to talk through your space before anything is designed.