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News Release from: Turner & Townsend | Subject: Efficiency and effectiveness in the workplace
Edited by the Buildingtalk Editorial
Team on 03 September 2007
Building for the future
Tenants and occupiers are setting an increasingly tough agenda for efficiency and effectiveness in the workplace.
In the UK more corporate organisations are looking for smaller working space for their employees than that recommended by the British Council of Offices Does this mean that the BCO's guideline standards which have been adopted by agents, developers and investors in other parts of the world are outdated?
This article was originally published on Buildingtalk on 14 Nov 2006 at 8.00am (UK)
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The issues that we are discussing here have a direct impact on the typology of buildings with regard to footprint, adaptability, design, infrastructure and location.
Efficiency.
Property and operational costs are typically the second largest expense for office based organizations after staff costs.
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While they may be relatively low compared with staff costs, they have a direct and immediate impact on the financial performance of the occupier.
If significant savings on space used can be achieved, then feedback from the UK suggests that approaching 10% of overall leased area and associated cost could be avoided, positively impacting the bottom line.
Adaptability and Flexibility.
The workplace can act as either a significant catalyst or as a hindrance to the ability to respond to change.
Building design can impact change processes in a wide variety of ways namely the ability to subdivide the space within buildings, the ease of adding internal walls and partitions to make enclosure of various sorts, the ease of re-planning and re-defining the uses of space and the ability to make changes to IT and other services infrastructures.
Staff Performance.
This can be broken down into three main areas:.
Health and comfort - providing for the health and comfort of occupants.
Alignment with process - effective alignment of workplace with work practice and process.
Internal expression - communication of messages of staff about corporate values and how business values their workforce.
Sustainability.
In the UK, the government has declared a target of 60% CO2 emissions reduction by 2050.
Although in Australia, the Kyoto Treaty has not been endorsed large corporate occupiers are beginning actively to incorporate sustainability into their briefing process thus forcing the landlords and developers to address sustainability head on.
Although it is early days, it is evident that occupiers will use sustainability as a weapon in lowering costs through reduced energy consumption of less space and changing staff behaviours.
In addition to all of the above, organizations are also competing to attract the 'bright young things'.
This requires thinking differently as new employees now demand more autonomy and flexibility about where and how they work especially with mobile technology.
The office needs to be more intelligent and respond appropriately, with the right cultural, physical and virtual infrastructures.
It means that there can be less need to work in one particular space or real estate address.
It also means that when staff are in the 'office', the type of workspace that proves to best support them is unlikely to be one that is modeled around desks allocated to individuals and rather one where collaborative and shared work settings predominate.
So what are the implications for building owners in our CBD's?.
In terms of building specification, markets should expect the following:.
- An increase in medium depth buildings with atria to enable more interactive and intermittent patterns for occupancy within offices to be adaptable to change, greater contiguity.
- More focus on specifications driven by occupiers.
- Greater floor to ceiling heights.
- Resilient and adaptable building services.
- Large uninterrupted floor areas.
- Oversizing means of escape, WC provision and lifting/ escalators.
- More dynamic access and security systems and subletting / subdivision to reflect more and longer hours of operations.
The risk and costs for delivering the above changes will rest with building owners.
Tenants will expect buildings to be better aligned to these new occupancy requirements.
Landlords should expect greater scrutiny from prospective occupiers during pre lease site finding and due diligence appraisals and asset life and performance adaptability.
The drive for efficiency and effectiveness is also complimentary to the emerging sustainability agenda.
There are now a number of successful low energy/ low carbon buildings in the UK both in the Public and Private Sector.
The UK experience tells us that CO2 emissions can be reduced substantially by good design, construction and proximity to public transport interchanges.
In the UK, the revised Building Regulations have effectively put an end to conventional, air conditioned, all glass office buildings.
Although this is not an immediate risk in many markets, it is expected that more onerous regulation will emerge, forcing building owners to move away from the more traditional deep-plan, fully air-conditioned designs to those with more sophisticated controls and with lower energy consumption.
This will be to maintain long term building asset values and secure leases.
The key changes which building owners can expect are:.
- Opening windows and local controls, with under floor ventilation as a back-up.
- Comprehensive control over solar gain, through external louvres and/ or high performance glass;.
- Heavy mass structures rather than lightweight metal deck slabs, exposed to the internal air-stream.
- Simple control systems to allow night cooling of the structure.
- Intelligent lighting control systems that respond to daylight conditions.
- High level of insulation.
- High levels of airtightness.
- Reclamation of internal heat gains.
- Mechanical cooling for peak lopping only.
- Control systems that allow seasonal fluctuations in internal temperatures.
Expression.
Post 9/11, organizations are also looking at their branding implications both internally and externally.
Global brands are taking stock on whether highly branded, CBD-centric buildings are the instinctive choice.
And where there is less branding and statement from the building's physical design and structure, more emphasis can be placed on the internal design, branding and 'expression' that is displayed to staff and visitors.
This leads to seeking alternatives from highly visible intrinsic building design statements to more temporary interior design concepts which can deliver the vital messages of organizational vision and values but with an ability to be refreshed and replaced at more regular intervals and viewed by invited building users only.
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