Industrial and Warehouse Leasing Editing and Proofreading Services

A distribution company signs for a unit of 80,000 square feet. The racking arrives, goes up, and does not fit — the clear height is 10 metres at the apex and 8.2 under the haunch, the columns are on a grid that wastes an aisle, and the floor is rated for a loading that the top beam level exceeds when full. Every figure in the marketing brochure was true.

We edit what industrial agents, landlords and developers produce — unit specifications and technical particulars, clear height, floor loading and column grid documentation, dock and yard specification documentation, power, drainage and services capacity information, fit-out and racking guidance for occupiers, tenant technical requirement briefs, heads of terms and specification schedules, building manuals and handover information, planning and use restriction documentation, and pre-let and design and build specification documents. Our editors work on the specification a racking designer will use.

The technical specification for an industrial unit is where a letting either fits the occupier or wastes their first quarter, and its failure is quoting the best figure for each attribute. Height is quoted at the apex, loading at the strongest bay, and power at the incoming supply, and no occupier can plan from any of them. We work through these so clear height is stated at the lowest obstruction with a plan showing where the restrictions are, since racking is designed to the worst case and the haunch, the sprinkler main and the lighting all sit below the apex; so floor loading is given as a uniformly distributed load and as a point load with the base plate size it assumes, because racking transmits its weight through small plates and the UDL figure alone is not usable; so the column grid is given with dimensions and shown on a plan, given that a grid slightly out of step with a standard bay width costs an aisle across the whole building; so the door specification separates level access from dock levellers, with the heights, the widths and the internal turning space, as a yard that cannot take an articulated vehicle's swing is a yard that cannot be used; so power is stated as the available capacity at the unit's panel rather than the site's incoming supply, with any spare; so drainage, gas and water capacities are given with what they will and will not support; and so any restriction on use, hours or vehicle movements is stated with the specification. Specifications written this way are used by a racking designer without a phone call.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including specifications, terms and occupier requirements. We are editors rather than surveyors or structural engineers, and we offer no view on capacities, loadings or suitability. What we can do is make each figure the one an occupier can design against.