7 mistakes when choosing an office above the 15th floor

The bottleneck, or how long you really wait for the elevator

Most tenants look at the square footage and price, forgetting about the most important device in the building: the elevator. In high-rise office buildings by the Mogilskie Roundabout or in the vicinity of Zabłocie, the waiting time during peak hours, i.e., between 8:43 and 9:08, is sometimes absurd. We have seen cases where a team of 14 people lost a total of over 3 hours a week just standing in front of closed elevator doors. This is a real cost for your company that is not seen in the rent table.

Before you sign the contract, do a simple test. Visit the building on a Thursday at 9:00 AM. Check if the building has an intelligent elevator control system that groups passengers going to specific floors. In one of the Krakow skyscrapers where we moved a client in March 2024, changing the system shortened the time to get to the office by 2.4 minutes. It may seem like a little, but with 47 employees, it's a huge difference in team morale right at the start of the day.

It's also worth asking about freight elevators. If you are planning a furniture delivery for 23 people and the building only has two passenger elevators, the management might tell you to carry desks up the stairs or do it at night for an extra fee. These are the small costs that hurt the most once you've moved in.

The elevator waiting time is a hidden prestige tax that you pay every morning.

The aquarium effect – sun and cooling costs

Beautiful, fully glazed walls on the 19th floor look great during a presentation, but in July they turn the office into a greenhouse. At Mondiairelay-suivi, we measured the temperature near the windows in office buildings with southern exposure. Without proper glass coatings, the temperature at the desk can jump to 29 degrees Celsius as early as 11:00 AM. The air conditioning works, of course, but the noise of the blowers set to maximum makes phone calls and focus difficult.

Ask the manager about the solar energy transmittance factor (g-value) for the glass. If it's higher than 0.32, prepare for high electricity bills. In August 2023, one of our clients paid 19% more for cooling energy alone than they had budgeted. The office must earn money, not burn through profits fighting the laws of physics.

Good practice is to check if the building has external blinds or special automatic shading systems. In modern skyscrapers in Krakow, this is standard, but in older facilities from 2012-2015, they are often missing. Old walls, new rules – if you don't have control over the light, your designers or programmers won't see anything on their monitors for half the day.

No possibility of opening a window – fresh air under control

For many people, this is the biggest shock after moving from a townhouse to a skyscraper. On high floors, windows are usually locked for safety reasons and wind pressure. All air exchange depends on the central ventilation unit. If the system hasn't been cleaned for the last 2 years, your team will start complaining about headaches and dry throats after only 3 hours of work. We count every meter, but the quality of that air is more important than the square footage.

In February 2024, we did an audit in an office building on Pawia Street. It turned out that the ventilation efficiency was set at 32% power to save energy. After our intervention and changing the settings, the number of sick leaves in the client's company fell by 14% in one quarter. This shows that technology in a skyscraper must be under constant supervision because you can't just 'air out the room'.

Check if the building has a LEED or BREEAM certificate. These are not just empty symbols. They guarantee that someone is actually watching the filters and air humidification. In offices above the 15th floor, the air can be very dry, which leads to rapid eye fatigue when working in front of a monitor. We'll give it to you straight: if you smell 'old dust' during the office presentation, run away.

Parking and courier delivery logistics

A high-rise office building usually means a large number of tenants and a small number of parking spaces. The standard in Krakow is one space per approximately 87-105 square meters of area. If you rent 200 meters for a team of 22 people, you'll get two, maybe three garage remotes. What about the rest? Finding a place in Grzegórzki or near the Main Station takes an average of 14 minutes every day. Your employees will be late and irritated even before their first coffee.

Another problem is package pickup. Couriers hate skyscrapers. Before they park, go through reception, sign the list, and go up to the 18th floor, a lot of time passes. They often leave packages at the main reception. If you order 6 monitors, your assistant will have to organize transport from the ground floor to the top. This seems like a trifle until you have to do it three times a week.

Look for buildings that have dedicated 'delivery' zones or parcel lockers inside the facility. Several new investments on Al. Pokoju introduced such facilities last year, and tenants praise them highly. It's a small thing that saves real time for your people.

If your people park 12 minutes from the office, it's as if you shortened their workday by an hour a week.

GSM range and wireless network stability

The concrete and steel of skyscrapers act like a Faraday cage. On the 15th or 20th floor, phone signal can drop to one bar, and calls are dropped at the most inconvenient moment, e.g., during negotiations with an important contractor. In 2023, we helped an IT company that rented a beautiful office and then had to spend an extra 11,400 PLN on signal boosters (repeaters) because cell phones simply did not work inside the open space.

Before signing the contract, step inside with phones from two different operators. Check the range in the bathrooms and in the kitchen – that's where we often run away to take a private call. If the signal 'floats', make sure the building has a DAS (Distributed Antenna System) installation. This is a modern standard but still rare in smaller skyscrapers.

Also, remember the internet. The office must earn money, so you need two independent fiber optic providers. In high buildings, cables go through vertical shafts. If someone damages a cable on the 3rd floor, you on the 18th might be left without a network for the whole day. Always ask which physical paths the connections enter the building. Better to know this now than when the server goes down.

Evacuation and safety procedures

Few people think about it, but once a year you will have to walk down from the 17th floor via the stairs during a trial evacuation. This is not an exercise for people in poor condition. At Mondiairelay-suivi, we always check the openness of stairwells and how assembly points are organized. In some office complexes, assembling 1500 people in a small square in front of the entrance is a logistical nightmare.

Check the smoke extraction systems and emergency lighting. In skyscrapers, these systems are dual, but it's worth checking the date of the last inspection of fire extinguishers and hydrants. It may sound like bureaucracy, but the safety of your 47 employees is your legal responsibility. We have seen buildings where old furniture stood in the stairwells – this is absolutely unacceptable.

It also happens that fire elevators are only for the fire brigade. In the event of a power failure (which happens rarely in Krakow, but still), you will have to use the stairs. If you have people with limited mobility in your team, a high floor can be a real barrier for them. Always keep that in mind when planning the team structure.

Floor plate and 'dead' meters

In skyscrapers, the middle of the building is usually occupied by the elevator core, installation shafts, and stairwells. This means your office is often a 'doughnut' around concrete. Such a setup makes it difficult to plan large conference rooms or spacious relaxation zones. We count every meter, and in skyscrapers you often pay for corridors that cannot be used meaningfully.

Before ordering a design, take a tape measure. Structural columns in tall buildings are much thicker than in low-rise office buildings. They can have a meter in diameter and fall right in the middle of where you planned the desks. One of our clients had to give up 4 workstations because a column made it impossible to set up a row of desks according to health and safety regulations.

Our advisor, Beata Wiśniewska, always repeats: look at the net area, not the gross. The common area factor (add-on factor) in skyscrapers is often from 5% to even 8.2%. This means you pay for a piece of the reception downstairs and the corridor by the elevators. At a rent of 16 EUR per meter, these 'virtual' meters cost you thousands of euros a year. Look for buildings that have this factor at 3% - 4.66%.

Structural columns in skyscrapers won't disappear, but bad design can make you pay dearly for them.