September 4, 2015

UK surveyors remain slow to adopt BIM despite awareness of risks ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • News, Property, Technology

According to a new survey from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, around a half (49 percent) of surveyors do not use Building Information Modelling (BIM) on a regular basis, despite the fact that a significant majority (74 percent) have considered the business case and a similar proportion (73 percent) acknowledge that non-adoption will create significant challenges for the UK construction sector. When asked for the reason for non-adoption. around two thirds (68 percent) feel they lack the information to adopt BIM properly, a third (31 percent) claim there is no need for their own firm and a quarter (26 percent) say they lack the technical skills needed for adoption. This is in spite of that fact that over half of all respondents (55 percent) say that they are currently working with architects that use BIM.

September 2, 2015

And the unsurprising winner of the Carbuncle Cup this year is… ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Architecture, News, Property

In one of the least surprising announcements of the year so far, Building Design magazine has announced that this year’s winner of its annual Carbuncle Cup is London’s Walkie Talkie. The building, officially 20 Fenchurch Street in the City of London, was always the frontrunner. Its bulbous 37-storey design has always been a source of contention with the Government, UNESCO and English Heritage raising objections to its impact on the London skyline. During its construction it raised practical concerns in addition to its undeniable aesthetic challenges and the shaky design of its ‘sky garden’, most notably by reflecting and concentrating sunlight to fry the street below (a problem solved by a multi-million pound investment in alterations to the facade) and by funnelling strong winds around its base (an issue that has prompted a wider look into the impact of tall buildings at street level).

August 31, 2015

BSI revises design and construction standard for facilities managers ⁰

by Neil Franklin • Architecture, Facilities management, News, Property

BSI, the UK based organisation responsible for developing and publishing standards for businesses, has revised BS 8536-1 Briefing for design and construction: Code of practice for facilities management (Buildings infrastructure). The standard has been included in the Level 2 BIM package which the Government expects companies to offer when tendering for Government contracts. The standard has now been brought into line with the principles of the Soft Landings Framework and Government Soft Landings (GSL) post occupancy evaluation and BIM requirement. Soft landings is designed to enable the transition from design and construction into operation. It advocates collaboration during briefing, design, construction and handover between the design and construction team and the operator, operations team or facilities manager.

August 25, 2015

Flexible working and coworking are disrupting property markets worldwide ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Property

Coworking space and the growth of flexible are already having a major disruptive effect on commercial property markets worldwide, according to a study from real estate trade association CoreNet Global. The survey of members representing a diverse range of sectors found that the two most disruptive trends in the market over the short to medium term are flexible working environments (64 percent) and new technology (64 percent). The report, which has been issued to CoreNet members ahead of the organisation’s 2015 EMEA Summit which will take place in London in September, claims that coworking spaces are capitalising on these trends to have a major disruptive effect on local property markets and are particularly attractive to occupiers from specific sectors such as those working in financial technology.

August 24, 2015

Demand for commercial office space in UK cities continues to surge ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Cities, News, Property

According to the latest quarterly update from property advisors Knight Frank, demand for commercial office space in the UK’s regional markets remains remarkably strong, driving upward pressure on rental prices and increasing the demand for new commercial property developments. According to the report, demand is up by around a half compared to the previous quarter, with Birmingham enjoying the largest increase of around 400 percent. Strong economic growth is reflected in healthy occupier demand, which saw a total of 2.08m sq ft taken up in the three months to the end of June, which was 51 percent ahead of the first quarter and 49 percent above the five year quarterly average. The stand out let was HSBC’s at Birmingham’s Arena Central development (top) which accounted for fully half of the city’s take up of space and which we reported here.

August 10, 2015

London is leading the way in the global coworking revolution ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Property, Workplace design

Changing attitudes amongst occupiers towards office space and the explosion in the numbers of freelance workers and microbusinesses are driving an upsurge in coworking and other flexible working environments worldwide. That is the key conclusion of a new report from DTZ which claims that the number of dedicated flexible working locations worldwide is likely to hit 50,000 over the next three years, with parts of London leading the way. We reported recently how coworking pioneer WeWork has already announced its plans to dominate London’s commercial property scene in the same way it already does Manhattan’s. Now, the How You Work report from DTZ suggests that this is the shape of things to come for many cities, with London leading the way alongside a tranche of global tech and creative centres such as New York, Berlin and Shanghai.

August 6, 2015

Infographic: The workplace week in numbers, for 7 August ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Facilities management, Flexible working, Property, Workplace, Workplace design

August 6, 2015

Government publishes details of £118 bn pipeline of construction projects ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Facilities management, Knowledge, News, Property, Public Sector

The UK Government, in conjunction with construction industry data specialist Barbour ABI, has published a full detailed list of around £118 billion of publicly funded building projects scheduled for the next five years. You can find the pipeline as a spreadsheet here, with the data broken down by sector and including some basic data for each project. The Government has also introduced a dedicated website with details of the projects with updates to the raw data available via both the central government website and at data.gov.uk. The government construction pipeline is now updated twice a year which the Government claims will ‘extend its reach beyond the major construction spending departments and improve the integrity of the data’ and demonstrate its commitment ‘to continuous engagement with industry and government clients on current use and future improvements’.

July 27, 2015

Coworking juggernaut WeWork announces plans to dominate London

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Property, Workplace design

Earlier this month, US based coworking juggernaut WeWork announced that it had opened the UK’s largest space of its kind in Moorgate in East London. Now, according to a report in the journal CoStar, the firm is looking to become a major tenant in the commercial property market in London in the same way that it has come to dominate Manhattan. According to the report, WeWork is looking to acquire over 1 million sq. ft. of space in the capital over the next 18 months as it seeks to provide coworking space for its growing customer base of young creative and technology businesses and other start ups. If it succeeds in finding the space it wants, the firm will have quadrupled the commercial property it occupies in London to 1.5 million sq. ft. WeWork is already Manhattan’s largest tenant and is now valued at $10 billion, having started in 2010.

July 24, 2015

Groundbreaking public sector estate scheme rolled out nationwide

by Mark Eltringham • Facilities management, News, Property, Public Sector

We’ve reported previously on the Government’s One Public Sector Estate scheme, which encourages local authorities to find ways to share office space and find other ways of divesting buildings as well as freeing up land for development. Over the past two years there has been a phased rollout of the scheme to 32 councils. Now the Cabinet Office and the Local Government Association claim they have gauged the success of the first two phases and are confident the scheme can be expanded nationwide. Their announcement suggests that the 32 councils who are currently on the programme own 28 percent of council land and property assets in England and have applied the ideas of the One Public Sector Estate Initiative to free up land for around 9,000 homes and create some 20,000 new jobs. The councils involved are also expected to raise £129 million in capital receipts from land sales and cut running costs by £77 million over 5 years.

July 24, 2015

Growth in demand for scarce office space will lead to rents rise

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, News, Property

Demand from business for commercial property rose for the eleventh consecutive quarter, while available space fell for the ninth successive period, according to the latest RICS Commercial Market Survey. As a result, rents are expected to rise at the fastest pace since the survey began in 1998 with 46 percent more respondents forecasting higher, rather than lower, rent rates going forward. Offices remain the segment of the market where rental expectations remain most buoyant, while retail continues to lag, although even in this area, momentum is picking up. Across the whole of the UK, but excluding the capital, 95 percent of respondents believe that current commercial market valuations are either at or below fair value (roughly unchanged since Q1 2015). However, in London 50 percent of contributors now feel that commercial office space valuations are ‘expensive’ – an increase from 45 percent in the first quarter of this year.

July 23, 2015

Business start-ups in London grew by nearly a quarter in a year

by Sara Bean • News, Property, Technology

The number of new business start-ups in London has increased by nearly a quarter over the past year, an analysis of Companies House data by Instant Offices’ has revealed. This is driven predominantly by growth in technology firms, but also by retail and creative services’ companies. Key growth sectors include technology services which went up 200 percent year on year, wireless and telecommunications were up by 79 percent and computer facilities companies by 51 percent. Tim Rodber, CEO of Instant Offices, said: “The diversity of the firms behind this increase in demand is interesting – but of particular note is the role technology and creative services industries are playing in driving growth in the Capital and producing space requirements outside traditional business locations. Areas such as Southwark and the City Fringe are benefiting from high demand as start-ups weigh up the need to not only reduce costs, but attract the best staff to great work spaces.”