The meetings are over, hands have been shaken, the T’s are crossed and the I’s are dotted. Everyone breathes a sigh of relief, except you. Are you ready? The building clearance is happening, and you are in charge!

Nervous? Don’t be, Warp It are here to guide you. In fact, we’ve put together a great guide on how to go through the building decommission process already, so in this article we are really zooming in on effective communications.

Huge opportunity

When a building clearance occurs, reuse comes to life. This is without a doubt the best opportunity for reusing a lot of assets in a short amount of time; think volume, volume, volume! With this opportunity to save and maximise impact comes the need for a great deal of communications, because if people don’t know that they can, or how to reuse internally (or externally), then these useful assets might not find new homes, and that makes your building clearance a bit tougher.

Our template

Putting together an announcement might seem like a daunting task if you’re the world’s best project manager who lacks confidence writing creatively. So put your mind at ease, we’ve written it for you, and this template (at the end of this blog post) is based on years of experience supporting hundreds of building clearances and working directly with decommission teams.

With an announcement you can

• Inform your staff of the reuse opportunity from the building
• Ensure maximum internal reuse
• Generate interest from charity partners
• Reduce disposal costs
• Build awareness and enlist new Warp It members

Here’s some solid decommissioning advice for you from a professional who has ‘been there, done that and got the Warp It t-shirt!’.

Mollie Kerr from Edinburgh City Council told us ‘We involved property planning and our procurement apprentices as a learning experience for them. They got involved and we treated this as a process redesign and improvement project. We completely redesigned how the council tackles decommissioning and moving buildings now. The two apprenticeships catalogued the assets, added them to Warp It, and supported staff joining and claiming items. Once they understood how it worked it was fairly easy. They team also supported accommodation planning during the week of the school move and ensured the charities got the correct items and removed them appropriately.’

After your announcement

We suggest putting a blog post together listing some of the best assets from the clearance, so thay staff get hungry for goodies and start flocking in the masses!

Best practice

Start cataloguing your assets right now! As soon as the building decommission is confirmed, you’ll save yourself a lot of future stress by getting this done. This also gives an opportunity to match staff with new items before the clearance even happens, streamlining the process even further. Learn more here.

All that’s left to do is take our template and fill in the blanks. Don’t worry, it’s a five minute job that will boost reuse exponentially.

Download the building clearances template