Planning For Expansion: Options!

​The best time to think about future expansion is at the front end of your design project!   Even if you decide that you want to contain and limit the size and scope of your commercial enterprise or private residence, consider those factors at the beginning.
 
The concept of expansion contains many approaches and possibilities.  When primary design takes future expansion into consideration, many future headaches and expenses can be avoided!
 
It is important to become knowledgeable concerning your local and regional zoning and development patterns, plans and projections.  These laws, ordinances, plans and procedures may have major impacts on your projected vision.
 
In the first stages of your design process, your professional team will want insights concerning how you envision the project for the long run.   This information will assist your designer in suggesting how to accommodate your possible growth patterns and how to address them. 

Designing flexibility into your prototype environment may more easily facilitate smooth and reasonable future expansion.

Will you want to expand the then existing space?  Will you want to expand through new construction on the same site?  Do you foresee expansion to new second or third sites?
 
Finite answers for some of these issues may not be possible in the early stages, but it seems smarter to entertain those possibilities when speculating some of the simpler initial choices and decisions.
 
Progressively designing for the future takes into consideration both the market place and your projected (and anticipated) market share.  To realize successful participation in your commercial venture, the possibility of the need to expand must be on the table.   Anticipating your share of the reasonable growth of the area mandates reasonable preparation.
 
Where space permits, some areas may be theoretically held in reserve, temporarily used for other pragmatic needs (such as excess inventory) until expansion of the primary use is needed.  You might want to acquire more space than is initially needed, temporarily rent or sub-lease the excess, then expand when necessary.
 
In residential project considerations there is that phenomenon of needing more space now than you may need in the future!  Almost like a reverse expansion concept, your designer can help you to design towards future reconfiguration for changed use.  Families grow then slim down again; it can’t hurt to give some thought, way in advance, to how you might accommodate that transition without having to re-invent the wheel.
 
Looking at a site or facility that is favorable for additional physical construction is another consideration.  It is good to have the option, even if you never implement it.
 
Expanding to additional other sites presents important considerations that are linked to your overall “brand.”  When developing initial design concepts, your professional team would be helped greatly by knowing of even the remote possibility that you might want to “clone” your operation in the future. 
 
Carrying your business image, reputation, and familiar characteristics to another site should be as risk-free as possible.   Transferrable, flexible and “marketable” design concepts at the front end will support and assist expansion and transition in the future.
 
Fortunately, your professional design team has experience with the challenge of designing today with the future in mind.  Durability and quality of all specific project elements is as much a part of your financial good sense as it is to look just a bit further ahead and consider all your possible growth and expansion options.