Shop Layout

How you layout your shop space is largely indicative of what your space actually is so these are more just rules of thumb.

Purchasing vs. Building

From an organizational standpoint, purchasing used racks, shelving, benches and the like is better in the long term. While building those things can be beneficial in the short term because it is immediate and can cost less initially. In the event you expand and need to upgrade, the thing you bought a long time ago is an asset you can now sell. If you built it the likelyhood that someone will want to buy some old 2x4s or customer welding is unlikely.

Volunteer Workstations

These are basic stations consisting of the most common tools and a work stand. The more of them you can fit, the better.

Master Mechanic Workstation

There is usually only one of these. Here you will have a complete set of tools including those that are expensive and easily damaged. Some shops will raise this off the ground to give the master mechanic a bird's eye view of the shop. It also helps to clearly define who is in charge.

Cash Register

If you are dealing with money at the shop, you will want one. Depending on how your staffing works this should be located next to the Master Mechanics Workstation.

Wheel Storage

If you have overhead space -- use it! Hang wheels and tires from the ceiling using bicycle hooks. Use a adjustable high reach hook if necessary to get them down.

Bike Storage

You will have to deal with four types of bikes:

Untouched Bikes: just donated
Project Bikes: in progress (may include Earn-a-Bike)
Finished and/or Consignment Bikes: done
Customer Bikes: the one they rolled in on

Having a logical seperate between these is important. This can be done by different colored tags, or different locations in the shop. Possible ways to store these bikes are:

Bicycle display racks (aka Bicycle Display Fixtures)
Bike Hooks

Part Storage

This can get crazy. Most likely you will end up with large bins of parts. You should provide a place nearby where customers / volunteers can rummage through the bins and not cause an inconvient mess.

At the Salt Lake City Bicycle Collective we used to use milk crates to hold all the parts, this caused the two problems listed below. Since that time we have moved to smaller, colored parts bins that are easy to bring to a bench, look through, and then bring back.

A milk crate full of stems, derailers, or some other dense metal object only worked for bigger stronger volunteers because it was too heavy to put back on a shelf for everyone else, which meant the crates all ended up on the ground at the end of a night.
Because milk crates are so deep, people had to dig through nearly 100 other items to get to the bottom. Which meant the search took up lots of bench or floor space, and rarely did all the parts make it back in the crate.

Lounge Area

What place is complete without a lounge area?

Classroom Area

If you are going to be teaching non-mechanics related bicycle classes, such as BikEd, you will need a seperate space for this.

Bathrooms

Industrial (easy to clean) sinks are a must.

A shower is also a bonus.

Metal Recycling

If you don't have the ability (truck) or the volunteers to recycle the metal. An easy solution is placing an old dumpster labeled 'Free Scrap Metal' in both english and spanish outside of your shop. There are people that go around looking for scrap steel metal to recycle for money, it isn't that much so let them do it. Aluminum has a better rate, so you may want to do that yourself.

UPDATE: We tried using the scrap metal dumpster method at the Salt Lake City Bicycle Collective but after having to constantly pull trash out of it, we got rid of it. As it turns out, a simple sign on the outside of the building saying "free metal gratis" is all you need to let me people know. Once it is established as a location with the local scrappers you won't even need a sign anymore.