You signed the lease and the free-rent clock is running: finishing a build-out on time

The space is yours, and it is a concrete box

You have a signed lease, a landlord who has handed over the keys, and a space that is bare concrete, open ceiling and a few stubbed utilities. You also have a date. Maybe it is the end of the free-rent period, maybe a franchisor's opening deadline, maybe the day your current office lease ends. From this point, every week of delay is rent, payroll and lost revenue paid on a location that is not open, and most of the people you need to make it open have never met each other.

At Harrison Construction we have spent more than twenty years building commercial space in Fort Worth and across the region, with restaurants as our specialty and medical and dental offices alongside. The owners who come to us at this stage are not confused about what they want. They are worried about the calendar, and in my experience they are right to be. The build-out itself is the part most people understand. The weeks before the first wall goes up are where schedules are won or lost.

Why build-outs run late, and it is rarely the construction

The first cause is permitting. A commercial finish-out needs plans reviewed and approved by the city before work starts, and a restaurant adds health department review, grease interceptor requirements, hood and fire suppression approvals and often a utility upgrade. Each review has its own clock, each comment round adds time, and a set of drawings that was not coordinated with the landlord's building systems comes back with corrections. Owners who assume permitting takes a couple of weeks are the ones who open two months late.

The second cause is the unknowns in the shell itself. Existing utilities that are not where the landlord's drawings said, a slab that has to be cut for plumbing, electrical service too small for a kitchen, a roof that cannot take new equipment without structural work. The third is long-lead items: kitchen equipment, HVAC units, specialty lighting and millwork that must be ordered weeks or months ahead and were not ordered because the budget was not final. And the fourth is decision-making. Finishes left unselected, a franchisor's approval not yet received, a change requested after walls are closed. The hammer is rarely what slows a job down.

• Permit review and comment cycles, especially for restaurants
• Shell conditions that differ from the landlord's drawings
• Long-lead equipment and materials ordered too late
• Utility capacity that has to be upgraded
• Owner and franchisor decisions left open while the clock runs
• Changes made after the schedule was set

What to get in order before you call a contractor

Read the lease work letter. It states what the landlord delivers and what you are responsible for, how much tenant improvement allowance is available and how it is paid, and the deadlines for plan approval and completion. Those terms set the real budget and the real schedule. Then gather what you have: the landlord's base building drawings, your architect's plans if you have them, the franchisor's design standards and equipment package if you are a franchisee, and any surveys of the existing space.

Decide what you can decide now. Finishes, equipment, signage, the number and location of fixtures: every selection made before pricing is a change order avoided later. Confirm who the decision-makers are on your side and how quickly they can turn around approvals. And look at the site itself with someone who knows what to look for: where the utilities enter, what the ceiling height allows, whether the slab has already been cut, how deliveries will reach the space. A walk-through with an experienced builder before the design is final can save weeks.

• Lease work letter: landlord delivery, allowance, deadlines
• Base building drawings and any existing surveys
• Architect's plans and franchisor standards, as far as they exist
• Finish and equipment selections made or scheduled
• A named decision-maker with authority to approve quickly
• A site walk with a builder before design is locked

When to bring the general contractor in

The common pattern is to finish the design, send it out for bids, pick the lowest and start. It works for simple spaces. For a restaurant, a medical office or anything with real mechanical, plumbing and electrical scope, it wastes the period when a contractor is most useful. Brought in during design, a builder prices as the drawings develop, flags the shell conditions that will cause trouble, identifies the long-lead items so they can be ordered early, and tells you honestly whether the budget and the date are compatible before either is promised to a landlord or a franchisor.

If you already have drawings and a deadline, that is still the moment to call rather than after bids come back over budget. A contractor who does this every week will tell you in the first conversation what the permit path looks like in your city, what the schedule can realistically be, and where the risk sits. If the answer is not what you hoped, better to hear it now than in month four.

How we run a project from due diligence to opening

Our work starts with pre-construction. We review the lease work letter and the base building, walk the space, and go through the drawings with the design team to find conflicts before the city does. We price the project in detail, break out the allowance versus your cost, and identify every long-lead item with its order date. Then we manage permitting: submitting, tracking comments, coordinating responses with the architect and engineers, and keeping you informed of where the application sits. Our pre-construction services run from due diligence through the permit in hand, because that is where a project's course is set.

During construction we manage every aspect of the build, with job-site safety as a non-negotiable. The schedule is laid out by trade and by inspection, long-lead deliveries are tracked against it, and subcontractors are coordinated so that the electrician is not waiting on the framer. We hold regular progress meetings with you and issue project reports so you see the same schedule and budget we see, including problems. Our motto is Adapt and Overcome, and it exists because every shell has a surprise; the difference is whether you learn about it the day it is found with a plan attached, or weeks later as a delay.

At the end we manage final inspections, the certificate of occupancy, punch list and turnover, and for restaurants we coordinate with the equipment vendors and health inspection so the kitchen is ready when the staff arrives. The brands we have built for, including Five Guys, Which Wich, Pei Wei, Sonic, Pizza Patron and Hooters, run on opening dates, and that discipline shapes how we handle every project.

• Lease, base building and drawing review before pricing
• Detailed budget with allowance versus owner cost
• Long-lead items identified with order dates
• Permit submission, tracking and coordination through approval
• Trade-by-trade schedule tied to inspections
• Regular progress meetings and written project reports
• Final inspections, certificate of occupancy and turnover

What drives the cost of a finish-out

The condition of the shell is the first driver. A second-generation restaurant space with a grease interceptor, hood and adequate power in place costs a fraction of a first-generation shell where all of that has to be installed. Mechanical, electrical and plumbing scope is usually the largest share of a restaurant or medical budget, and it is set by the equipment and the fixture count more than by the square footage. Finishes range widely, and a franchisor's standards often fix much of that range for you.

Then there are the items owners forget to budget: utility impact fees and service upgrades, permit and plan review fees, the architect's and engineers' fees, signage, low-voltage and point-of-sale wiring, and furniture and equipment that sit outside the construction contract. Schedule compression costs money too; overtime and expedited materials are real. We do not publish prices because no two shells are alike, but we do give a detailed budget before you commit, and we keep it current as decisions are made.

How to pick a commercial general contractor

Ask for projects like yours, not just projects. A builder who has delivered restaurants knows health department sequencing and hood inspections; one who has built medical offices knows the plumbing and electrical density those spaces require. Ask who will manage your job day to day and how often you will meet. Ask how they report: a written schedule and budget update you can read, or a phone call when something goes wrong.

Confirm they are bonded and insured and ask for the certificates. Ask how they handle permitting, since some contractors leave that to the architect and the owner and some manage it. Ask how change orders are priced and approved, and ask for the last three clients they finished for, then call them with one question: did it open on the date they said it would. In my experience, that one answer tells you more than any proposal.

• Completed projects of your type: restaurant, medical, office
• A named project manager and a meeting cadence
• Written schedule and budget reporting
• Bonding and insurance certificates
• Clear permitting responsibility and change order process
• Recent clients who will confirm the opening date held

Mistakes that cost tenants their opening date

Signing a lease with a completion deadline before anyone has estimated the permit timeline. Designing a kitchen without checking the electrical service and then discovering the upgrade takes the utility months. Choosing the lowest bid from a contractor who excluded half the scope in the fine print. Ordering equipment after the permit instead of before. Changing the layout after inspections, which triggers re-review. Treating the landlord's drawings as accurate without a field survey.

On the owner's side, the quiet mistake is unavailability: a decision that sits in an inbox for a week pushes every trade behind it. And the one I see most from first-time operators is optimism about the date, with staff hired and marketing launched for an opening that the schedule never supported. A realistic date from the start lets you plan hiring and marketing around a day that will actually arrive.

What happens once you contact us

We will ask for the lease work letter, whatever drawings exist and your target date, and we will walk the space with you. From that we give you an honest read: what the permit path looks like, whether the date is achievable, where the budget risk sits and what should be ordered first. If the project is not a fit for us, we say so early.

If we go forward, pre-construction starts immediately, with pricing, permitting and long-lead procurement running in parallel rather than in sequence. You will have a named point of contact, a schedule you can read, regular progress meetings and written reports from the first week to the day you open. We build across Fort Worth and Dallas–Fort Worth, and we have found that the projects that open on time are the ones where the owner knew the truth about the schedule from the start. That is what we offer first.

Questions people ask me