About Mark Eltringham

Mark is the publisher of Workplace Insight, IN magazine, Works magazine and is the European Director of Work&Place journal. He has worked in the office design and management sector for over thirty years as a journalist, marketing professional, editor and consultant.

Posts by Mark Eltringham:

February 26, 2014

Don’t assume your colleagues are making you ill; it might be the office layout

by Mark Eltringham • News

It’s probably tempting to assume that any sniffles and bugs you’ve acquired at work are the direct result of the wheezing, sneezing, coughing and general poor hygiene of your co-workers. You could be right. But a new study suggests that the building and its interior design may well be having more of an influence than you think. The research published in the journal Ergonomics and available to read in full online here, explored the correlation between seven different models of office design and absenteeism in 2,000 subjects. The results published by researchers from Stockholm University in a report called ‘Office Design’s Impact on Sick Leave Rates’ found there was a clear link between how much time people spent off work and the layout of the offices in which they work.

February 24, 2014

HS2 is a project for today projected into an uncertain future

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management, Flexible working, Technology

Barely a day passes in the media without some new battleground opening up in the debate about the UK’s plan to develop HS2, the high speed line connecting London with Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, Sheffield and, for some reason, a place nobody’s heard of halfway between Derby and Nottingham called Toton (pop. 7,298). While the debate rages about the cost, the economic benefits, regional rebalancing, environmental impact, route and why the Scots and others are paying for a project that may leave them with worse train services, one of the fundamental flaws with the case for HS2 goes largely disregarded. It is that this is clearly a project designed for today, but that won’t be complete for another twenty years. The world then will be very different and, unfortunately, time isn’t quite as malleable as the movies would have us believe.

February 21, 2014

Businesses remain sceptical when it comes to public sector procurement

by Mark Eltringham • News, Public Sector

The jaded view that most UK businesses have of public sector procurement practices and winning Government work is evident in two new surveys, from the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) and the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAE). The CBI survey of 100 of its members found that 60 per cent have not seen an improvement in commercial skills applied in public procurement and one in five think they have actually deteriorated over the last year. Two thirds (67 percent) claimed that performance in standardising procurement processes is poor and a similar number said lowest cost was still driving most contracting decisions. The RAE meanwhile is calling for Government to integrate procurement processes into projects at an earlier stage and make it easier for smaller firms to win parts of major contracts.

February 20, 2014

European cities vie to wear Tech Hub crown

by Mark Eltringham • News, Property, Technology

You may not realise it, but apparently there is a close fought race being run between European cities for the title of European Tech Hub. According to a new report from Colliers International the front runners are London, Berlin, Dublin, Paris, Amsterdam, Munich and, in a Eurovision-like extension of Europe’s borders, Tel Aviv. London is currently in pole position but Berlin and Dublin are hot on its heels as they vie for the title of Europe’s ‘Silicon Valley’, according to latest research from Colliers International, global real estate advisors. According to the report, London needs to stay on its toes if it is to fend off the upstarts from Germany and Ireland. Berlin, in particular, is expected to add some 100,000 jobs to its tech sector within the next seven years.

February 19, 2014

London’s West End retains position as world’s most expensive office location

by Mark Eltringham • News, Property

World’s most expensive location

For the second year running, the most expensive office space in the world is to be found in London’s West End, according to the latest edition of Cushman & Wakefield’s annual Office Space Across the World report. Rents rose by 5 percent in the area, driven largely by an ongoing mismatch between demand for high grade space and its supply, as we have previously reported. Worldwide, office rents rose by 3 percent in 2013, with certain high growth regions such as Africa and the Middle East experiencing an increase in rents of as much as 10 percent in specific locations. Hong Kong was the second most expensive location according to the survey while the central business district of Moscow rose to third place, up from sixth in the previous survey.

February 18, 2014

UK workers exhibit split personalities when it comes to energy management

by Mark Eltringham • Environment, Facilities management, Legal news, News

A new survey has highlighted the disparity between how energy (and hence money) conscious British people are in their domestic and working lives. According to research carried out by Rexel UK we exhibit a ‘split personality’ when it comes to the ways in which we use energy. Just under half (48 percent) of those surveyed describe themselves as energy conscious at home, whereas only a fifth (20 percent) would say the same about themselves in the workplace. Over a third (70 percent) say that they are concerned about wasting energy at home, whilst only two-fifths (43 percent) worry about wasting energy at work. In addition people are actively choosing to charge electronic devices at work in preference to home and, while nearly all turn the lights off at home (93 percent), only 60 percent do so in the office.

February 14, 2014

A Silicon Valley office that embraces classic design to create its buzz

by Mark Eltringham • Architecture, Comment, Furniture, Workplace design

It is now common for tech and media businesses to take inspiration for the design of their offices from their local Wacky Warehouse, with treehouses, slides, acid coloured cushions, chairs, play areas and other sub-juvenilia thrown into the building in the name of both ‘fun’ and an assumption that the Gen Y employees they are so patronisingly fixated on are only recently off the teat. Meanwhile some are clearly drawn back to the more sober, rational and classic styles that have long attracted corporations, especially in the US. There is something familiar about an HQ like that designed for San Francisco based software developers Giant Pixel by Studio O+A which evidently harks back to the era of modernism and post war futurism associated with architect/designers like Eero Saarinen.

February 13, 2014

No pay rise for a while? Get used to it, says the CIPD

by Mark Eltringham • News, Workplace

The Chartered Institiute of Personnel and Development has today released a report analysing the most sustained and severe fall in real wages since at least the Second World War, and warns that the decline will not be reversed until there is a substantial improvement in the UK’s productivity. The report is accompanied by new survey data showing many employees expect pay rises in 2014 to be below inflation – a repeat of their experience in 2013. ‘Have we seen the end of the pay rise?‘, which is the third in a series of four Megatrends surveys exploring the future of work and the economic challenges which lie ahead, examines the effects of average weekly earnings that are now between 7.8 percent and 10.2 percent lower in real terms than they were five years ago, in January 2009, leading to a sustained squeeze on household finances.

February 13, 2014

Why do we bother going to work? Good question.

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management, Flexible working, Workplace

While the UK Government continues to explore new ways of getting people back to work more quickly following (or even during) illness, there are a number of counterpart questions that they continue to fastidiously ignore, one of which is ‘why bother?’. We might all ask ourselves that from time to time, whether petulantly or as a pressure-relieving alternative to ramming a co-worker’s head through a window or a laptop in a dumpster. But there are also reasons to raise the question coldly, rationally and with full awareness of all the facts, not least when it comes to assessing the increasing cost of going to work in the first place. Put simply, for many people it makes little or no financial sense to go to work.

February 12, 2014

Government BIM target ‘unachievable’, claim construction industry experts

by Mark Eltringham • Architecture, Facilities management, News, Property

The majority of building industry experts surveyed by law firm Pinsent Masons believe that one of the key UK Government target for the uptake of Building Information Modelling is now unachievable due to unfit contracts and the lack of a collaborative approach between clients and builders. The Government had hoped that all central Government construction projects would achieve BIM Level 2 by 2016. But according to the new report, nearly two thirds (around 64 percent)of the 70 people surveyed claimed it was impossible for the target to be met. ‘Level 2’ refers to a collaborative 3D setup in which all project information, documents and data are electronic with fully integrated software and interfaces.

February 11, 2014

Mental illness costs the UK economy £70 billion each year, claims OECD

by Mark Eltringham • Knowledge, News, Workplace

According to a new report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), issues related to mental health cost the UK around £70bn every year in lost productivity, benefit payments and spending on healthcare. The OECD’s Mental Health and Work report is an international initiative which has already produced reports over the last year exploring related issues in Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and now the UK. Forthcoming reports are due later this year for Australia, Austria and the Netherlands. The new UK report calls for employers to adopt better policies and practices to help people cope with mental health issues.