Why the written scope is the scope
No code or standard defines a white box. The phrase travels between owners, agents and tenants carrying whatever each of them last saw it mean, and no published source settles it. Nothing is priced into a shell job on the strength of the words alone: the written scope for that job lists what is being done, the drawings show it, and the estimate carries it in line items.
Shell work is still an alteration when it changes the building. A change, addition or modification in construction is an alteration whoever pays for it, so the path of travel reaches the area the landlord is working on now. The tenant's later fit-out is a separate scope with its own permit. The code text sets out both.
Emptying a suite is a waste job before it is a building job. CALGreen asks that at least 65 percent of the non-hazardous construction and demolition debris is recycled or salvaged, and an alteration meets it either with a waste management plan or through a waste management company that returns verifiable documentation. The CalRecycle summary sets out the routes. Lamps, batteries, electronics and aerosol cans are universal waste: the list goes in the construction documents and the disposal is verified.
An older shell is surveyed before it is opened. Cal/OSHA section 1529 presumes thermal system insulation and surfacing material in a building constructed no later than 1980 to contain asbestos until testing shows otherwise, and puts the determination of what is present, where and in what quantity on the owner before work starts. The survey status goes into the written scope.
What white-box build-out includes
Before anything is drawn, the work is written down item by item and agreed, so the phrase on the marketing sheet is replaced by a list. Anything an incoming tenant is expected to do instead is written in the same place, which keeps the two scopes apart later.
The suite is measured as it is, with the previous tenant's partitions, ceiling, services and finishes recorded, and the asbestos and lead survey status noted for a pre-1980 building.
What comes out is hauled on the 65 percent route with tickets, and the universal waste is separated and its disposal verified for the file.
The work being done now is drawn and, where it is an alteration, the path of travel to it is drawn with it, with energy calculations where the scope calls for them.
The written scope is built, and nothing outside it is added without a change to the scope and the estimate.
The suite is handed over with the permit record, the diversion tickets and photographs of what stands, so the next designer starts from the building.
White box is a phrase, not a standard. Every item is either in the written scope for that job or it is not in the job, and two parties expecting the same item is a dispute, not a variation.
Where white-box work is needed
Vacated retail suites
A suite handed back at the end of a lease is emptied and made presentable before it is marketed, with the work agreed in writing first.
Office floors between tenants
A floor left by one tenant is stripped of partitions and cabling so the next layout can be drawn against the structure rather than the last plan.
Tilt-up warehouse shells
A shell offers slab, walls and roof, and everything a tenant needs at one end of it is scope that has to be written before it is priced.
Second-generation vacant space
Two or three fit-outs leave layers of ceiling, services and finish, and the survey decides which of them the shell work is expected to remove.
Suites held for lease
Space held empty is worked on in the gap between tenants, when access is free and the strip-out does not have to be phased.
Buildings from 1980 or earlier
The presumption about thermal system insulation and surfacing material applies here, so the survey status is settled before demolition is scheduled.
Questions about white-box build-out
Whatever the written scope for that job says, and nothing more. No code, standard or published source defines the term, so every item, finish level and exclusion is listed in writing and shown on the drawings before the work is priced. Two buildings marketed with the same phrase can be handed over in very different states.
No. The shell work and the tenant improvement are separate scopes with separate drawings, and the tenant's alteration is permitted in its own right. Keeping them apart is also what keeps the two estimates and the two sets of responsibility legible to everyone later on.
Where it is an alteration, yes, and the area being altered now is what the path is measured to. Work done later by a tenant is measured against its own altered area, under its own permit, so the two are not added together.
Out on the 65 percent diversion route, with tickets kept for the file, under either a waste management plan or a waste management company that returns verifiable documentation of what was diverted and where it went.
They are universal waste. The list of prohibited universal waste materials goes into the construction documents, and the disposal of lamps, batteries, electronics and aerosol cans is verified rather than assumed.
White-box build-out by city
White-box work is requested through the commercial construction page for your city, which covers the vacant stock and the department there.
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