i30 Builders · Free Planning Tool
Lease Commencement Schedule Planner
Give it your date, your space, and your use. It plans backward through every milestone and tells you plainly whether the date is comfortable, tight, or not achievable on that scope.
Free · Runs in your browser · No email required · DFW & East Texas
The Planner
Work Backward From the Date That Matters
Most tenants plan forward from the day they hope to start. Leases do not work that way. The only schedule worth trusting runs backward from the required opening date, because that is the date the penalty attaches to. Fill in four fields and the planner does the arithmetic our estimators do by hand.
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How Commercial Schedules Actually Work
Construction Is the Predictable Part
The mistake almost every commercial tenant makes is not underestimating construction. It is forgetting everything that has to happen before and after construction, which is where schedules actually slip. A contractor quotes twelve weeks, the tenant books the movers for week twelve, and nobody has accounted for the test fit, the drawings, two rounds of landlord criteria review, city plan review, fixture install, punch, and a certificate of occupancy that will not issue until five separate inspections have each passed on their own.
Measured properly, a commercial build-out has three blocks. In front of construction sit the field survey, the construction documents, and the approvals. Behind it sit the owner's fixture and equipment install and the closeout sequence. The construction band in the middle is the number a contractor controls most tightly and quotes most confidently, and it is usually the smallest source of variance in the whole schedule.
The front block is where tenants lose the most time, because it is the block nobody treats as construction. Drawings take two to four weeks to produce. Most leases give the landlord drawing-approval rights, and their architect reviews your set against the center's criteria manual at one to three weeks per round, with two rounds a realistic assumption on a first submission. City plan review averages three to four weeks across DFW markets when the submission is clean. Run in sequence, those add up to a quarter of a year before a single wall moves. Run in parallel, which is what both our permit guide and our build-out guide instruct, the approvals block collapses to the longer of the two reviews.
The back block is where tenants lose the most confidence, because it is the block that arrives when the space already looks finished. Fixtures, equipment, and stocking need one to two weeks. Punch, final inspections, and the certificate of occupancy need another one to two. A failed inspection repeats the wait, and most DFW cities will not issue the certificate until building, electrical, mechanical, plumbing, and fire have each signed off separately. A space that photographs beautifully in week eleven can still be legally closed in week thirteen.
Why Dates Slip
The Four Things That Move a Commercial Opening
Long-lead items ordered too late. This is the one tenants control least intuitively and the one that most often decides an opening. A space can be framed, wired, painted, and lit and still sit dark waiting on a rooftop unit, a storefront system, or a refrigeration package that was released against the issued permit instead of the approved scope. Storefront glazing commonly quotes 8 to 14 weeks. Refrigerated display cases run 10 to 16. Signage cannot begin fabrication until a sign permit that takes 10 to 30 business days in its own queue has issued. The order date for these items matters more to your opening than the construction start date.
Permit comment rounds. Three to four weeks is the average for a clean submission, and most of the variance lives in comment response, because the clock effectively restarts on any item the reviewer sends back. A complete set that answers the obvious code questions before a reviewer has to ask lands at the short end of the range. A thin one that invites three rounds lands well past it. Historic and downtown overlays, health department review, and fire marshal review each add a step on top.
Landlord approvals nobody scheduled. Landlord criteria review is not a city step, but it sits on the same critical path, and it is the item tenants most often leave off the schedule entirely. It covers storefront design, sign criteria, permitted work hours, barricade design, insurance certificates, and the closeout package required before the improvement allowance is released.
What demolition reveals. Shell condition surprises in an older space are the most common source of mid-project schedule loss. Marketing material describes a space at its best. Cut-apart ceiling grid, a rooftop unit at the end of its life, and restrooms that no longer meet current accessibility requirements all read as existing on a listing and as demolition on a schedule. Walking the suite with whoever will build it, before signature, is a free hour that routinely changes both the number and the date.
The Model
What Sits Around Construction, Every Time
These durations do not change with your sector or your square footage. They are the published phase times that bracket every commercial build-out, and they are what the planner subtracts before it ever touches the construction band.
1 to 2 weeks
Field survey and test fit
Cannot start until you have access to the suite and a measured as-built.
2 to 4 weeks
Construction documents and permit set
Cannot start until the test fit is approved and the layout is frozen.
3 to 6 weeks
Landlord criteria review and city plan review, in parallel
Landlord review runs 1 to 3 weeks per round over 2 rounds; city plan review runs 3 to 4 weeks. Run together, the block costs whichever is longer.
1 to 2 weeks
Fixture, equipment, and stocking install
Cannot begin until the floor or suite is substantially complete.
1 to 2 weeks
Punch, final inspections, and certificate of occupancy
Each trade inspects separately, and each inspection can fail on its own.
Construction Bands
The Band Comes From the Condition and the Use
The condition the landlord hands you is the largest single lever on duration, and the sector is the second. A sample of the bands the planner draws on, all published in the guides below.
| Sector | Delivered condition | Construction | Published band |
|---|---|---|---|
| Office | Second-generation (existing conditions to reuse) | 2 to 12 weeks | Second-generation refresh through standard tenant improvement |
| Office | White box or vanilla shell | 6 to 12 weeks | Standard tenant improvement |
| Retail | White box or vanilla shell | 8 to 14 weeks | Vanilla shell inline store |
| Office | Raw or cold shell | 12 to 20 weeks | Shell finish-out |
| Retail | Raw or cold shell | 14 to 20 weeks | Raw or cold shell |
| Restaurant, cafe, or food service | White box or vanilla shell | 12 to 24 weeks | Restaurant conversion |
| Medical or dental | Raw or cold shell | 16 to 24 weeks | Medical conversion in a shell |
These are construction weeks only. Design, approvals, fixture install, and closeout sit around them, which is why the planner never reports a construction band as if it were an answer to when you can open.
Where the Numbers Come From
Nothing Here Is Made Up
Every duration in the planner is lifted from a guide already published on this site, so the tool can never quietly disagree with what we tell you in writing. Read the sources and check the arithmetic.
How Long Does a Commercial Build-Out Take in DFW?
The construction scope bands and what drives duration.
The DFW Commercial Permit Timeline, Realistically
What the three-to-four week plan review window contains and what adds review layers.
Retail Store Build-Out Timeline in DFW
The phase-by-phase duration table, landlord review rounds, and long-lead lead times.
Second-Generation vs Raw Shell
What each delivered condition actually includes, and what listings overstate.
Common Questions
How far ahead of lease commencement should a build-out start?
Counting backward from the date you have to be open: one to two weeks for a field survey and test fit, two to four weeks for construction documents, three to six weeks for landlord criteria review and city plan review running in parallel, the construction band for your scope, one to two weeks for fixture and equipment install, and one to two weeks for punch, final inspections, and the certificate of occupancy. For a standard tenant improvement in a white box that totals roughly 14 to 26 weeks before the date, not the construction band alone.
Does this calculator send my information anywhere?
No. The arithmetic runs entirely in your browser. There is no account, no email gate, and nothing is transmitted to us. The one thing to know is that your four answers are written into the page address so the result can be bookmarked or sent to a broker, so treat that link the way you would treat the numbers in it. If you want the result reviewed against real drawings, you have to send them to us deliberately.
Where do the durations come from?
Every week range is taken from our published guides: the DFW build-out timeline guide for the construction scope bands, the DFW commercial permit timeline for the three-to-four week plan review window, the retail build-out timeline guide for the phase-by-phase table and long-lead item lead times, and the second-generation versus raw shell guide for what each delivered condition actually includes. Nothing in the planner is estimated independently of those guides.
Why does the planner give ranges instead of a single date?
Because the underlying data is a range. A standard tenant improvement is published as 6 to 12 weeks of construction, not 9. Collapsing that to a single number would be false precision, and false precision is exactly what causes a tenant to book movers for a week the space will not be ready. Each milestone is shown as an earliest and a latest date so you can see how much of the schedule is genuinely fixed.
Why does square footage not change the answer?
Because the published bands are set by scope and delivered condition rather than by area. A 2,000 SF shell finish-out and a 6,000 SF shell finish-out both carry full mechanical, electrical, and plumbing distribution, restrooms from scratch, and a complete interior build. Area affects crew size and cost far more than it affects calendar duration, so narrowing a published range by size would be invention rather than planning.
What if the planner says my date is not achievable?
Then it is not achievable on that scope, and the useful thing is knowing now rather than in week six. There are three honest options: reduce the scope, phase the opening so the part that can be finished opens first, or move the date. If the lease is not signed yet, the gap is a negotiation item, because delivery, rent commencement, and required opening are three separate dates and the space between them is the only free schedule in the deal.
Do restaurant and medical projects really take longer?
Yes, on two fronts. Hood and grease work, clinical plumbing, and equipment rough-ins put those projects in a heavier published construction band. Separately, health department review runs on its own timeline alongside the building permit, and fire marshal review applies wherever egress, suppression, or alarm devices change. Submitted together those reviews overlap. Submitted in sequence they add weeks nothing later recovers.
Can the schedule be compressed once it is set?
Safely, yes, and only in specific ways: overlap rather than sequence, release long-lead orders against the approved scope rather than the issued permit, take second-generation space where the expensive infrastructure already matches your use, and freeze the scope before mobilization. What we will not do is start permitted work before the permit issues or push past a failed inspection, because a red tag freezes the whole project and adds a correction order on top of the time you were trying to save.
The Next Step
A Real Schedule Comes From a Written Scope
Send us the permit set, or the bid you were handed, and we return a written scope gap analysis with a schedule built backward from your date and the items that threaten it flagged while there is still time to act on them. Free, in writing, no obligation. Response within 1 business day.