New consortium aims to standardise technology to drive Internet of Things

by • Facilities management, News, Technology

Internet of THingsThe development of the much talked-about Internet of Things has been boosted with the announcement that AT&T, Cisco, GE, IBM and Intel have come together to form a group called the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) which will  aim to standardise the way certain technologies function and so drive the uptake of the Internet of Things. The group has the apparent backing of the White House which has also announced that it will invest $100 million in research into the way physical objects can be linked to the internet, which is the fundamental principle of the Internet of Things.   The IIC will be outlining its own plans in the  near future to establish a common, global framework for the development of inter-connected digital and physical worlds and so sped up the adoption of an idea that promises to transform many aspects of our lives but which has not moved quickly enough, according to many commentators.

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Average office temperatures set too high say environmental experts

by • Environment, Facilities management, News, Workplace

office temperatures set too high

The publication this week of the report Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability by the UN’s science panel that argues that the world is “ill-prepared” for risks from a changing climate, but that opportunities to respond to such risks still exist, proves more than ever that the built environment can play a vital role in helping to curb global warming. The most obvious place to start is by turning down the temperature of the office, which according to researchers from Lancaster University’s DEMAND Research Centre, has become warmer in recent years. As reported by Clickgreen, the researchers from Lancaster University say the average office temperature of 22 degrees C is way too high, and by simply turning down the thermostat and asking occupants to don another layer could do much to address global warming. (more…)

Consultation opens on changes to construction project safety

by • Facilities management, News, Property

Safety on construction sitesA consultation on changes to the way safety on building projects is managed has opened today. The ten week consultation is being carried out by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) on proposals to replace the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2007 (CDM 2007). These currently apply to all construction work in the UK, and cover construction, alteration, fitting-out, commissioning, renovation, repair, upkeep, redecoration or other maintenance, decommissioning, demolition or dismantling. Key changes being proposed include the replacement of the CDM co-ordinator role with a principal designer role within the project team; introducing a duty on information, instruction, training and supervision to replace the duty to assess competence; removal of the domestic client exemption and transfer of these limited duties to the contractor/designer; and the replacement of the ACoP with tailored guidance. (more…)

BCO report claims to reveal link between green offices and business performance

by • Environment, Facilities management, News

Switch

A new report from the British Council for Offices claims that building owners could enjoy significant savings in their operating costs of up to £50 per square metre as well as improved staff productivity  and wellbeing by investing in environmentally friendly offices and work practices. The research, Improving the Environmental Performance of Offices claims to illustrate the benefits of energy efficient offices and highlight the positive impact they can have on employee productivity. The report calls on building occupiers to focus on key areas such as benchmarking and monitoring their energy usage. The BCO believes there is already a shift in attitudes towards a greater understanding of how offices actually perform environmentally rather than simply how they are designed and that more and more businesses are waking up to specific issues such as how much energy their buildings use outside of office hours. (more…)

The enduring need to put a bit more of the M into facilities management

by • Comment, Facilities management, Furniture, Workplace design

Shutterstock's new offices, Empire State Building

Shutterstock’s new offices, Empire State Building

It may well be a statement of the obvious, but it’s worth reminding ourselves sometimes that the term facilities management consists of two words. There is often a bit too much emphasis on the facilities and a bit too little on the management and sometimes we look for design and product solutions to problems that would be better managed in some way. You can put this down to a number of things but to some extent at least it’s down the idea that when you are determined to use a hammer, every job looks like a nail. Obviously the media takes some of the blame for this mindset because it often earns income from businesses who want to sell their stuff to solve particular problems rather than focus on the idea that many of them can be addressed either as a management issue or in combination with products and design.

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The workplace should be designed for (and by) people, not robots

by • Comment, Facilities management, Technology, Workplace design

Omnicorp logoFrom existential and dystopian fears expressed through books and films, we have long had an uneasy relationship with the idea of automatons and artificial intelligence. The UKCES saw robotics and automation as significant enough to include in it’s recent report on the future of work and the risks to jobs are very real based even on the more widespread adoption of the technologies already available to us. The possibility that many people may cease to have any economic value is a challenge we seem ill-equipped to meet. As ever, the web giants are leading the charge with Amazon prototyping delivery of packages by the kind of drones more commonly used over the tribal badlands of Afghanistan, as well as Google’s recent purchase of Boston Dynamics, makers of military-spec robots. The people behind the algorithms that gave us the unintentional hilarity of Google Suggest are now branching to create the sort of killer robots produced by OmniCorp in the Robocop movies.

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CIBSE’s new website inspired by iconic new City of London building

by • Company news, Facilities management, Property

5 Broadgate

5 Broadgate in the City of London

The look and feel of the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers’ (CIBSE) new website, which was unveiled this week, has been inspired by a building. According to CIBSE the modular, precise design of 5 Broadgate, designed by Make Architects is echoed in the modern new design, improved user navigation and optimisation for mobile and smart devices of its new website. 5 Broadgate, the new City headquarters for financial services firm UBS, is a 700,000 sq ft, 12 storey building based on a single block form, featuring deep reveals to windows and openings that are designed to add to its overall feeling of substance. The new building will include up to four trading floors, each able to accommodate approximately 750 traders, allowing UBS to consolidate its London trading operations into one building, when fully occupied in 2016. (more…)

European executives overconfident about their ability to manage change

by • Comment, Facilities management, News, Technology

SupertankerThere are a number of casual truisms about the modern workplace that everybody accepts to the point they become clichéd. But knowing something and knowing what to do about it can be two completely different things. While we might all agree that ‘change is a constant’ and the ‘main driver of change is technology’, both ideas are subject to the interconnected and immutable law that whatever we do is likely to be wrong to a greater or lesser degree. According to new research from the Economist Intelligence Unit, one of the main reasons for this is that organisations and business leaders are not very good at judging how responsive they are to change, make the converse misjudgements about the readiness of their competitors. In the words of the survey, they tend to see themselves as speedboats while viewing their competitors as supertankers when the reality is often the other way around.

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Morgan Lovell to research impact of the workplace on wellbeing

by • Facilities management, Workplace, Workplace design

sas-8_740_492_s_c1One of the latest pieces of research to explore the possible links between the workplace and individual wellbeing is to be carried out by office fit-out firm Morgan Lovell in conjunction with the British Council for Offices (BCO) and workplace analytics tool HATCH. The firm hopes to create an original piece of research that will help to quantify the impact the workplace has on wellbeing and identify the causal links. The firms says it hopes to use this to create a business case for occupiers who would like to invest in designing offices in a way that fosters wellness and productivity and  is inviting interested people and firms to take part. The firm says the survey takes less than 10 minutes and can be found here. To say thank you to respondents to the survey for their time, Morgan Lovell will donate £1 to Comic Relief for every person that completes the questionnaire.  The findings will be published in April.

What the UK regional divide can teach us about the way we design offices

by • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace design

Mind the GapIn the BBC documentary Mind the Gap, Evan Davis asks why London has an economy that is larger than and different to those of other UK cities, but also getting bigger and more differentiated. One of the main reasons he finds for this is something called agglomeration; the more skilled people you can put within physical reach of each other in an environment, the more productive and economically successful that environment will become.The problem for the UK is that not only is London of a different magnitude to its other cities, it does not comply with something called Zipf’s Law which states that in a typical country the largest city will be around twice the size of the second largest, around three times the size of the next largest and four times the size of the fourth largest and so on. It shouldn’t be taken too literally but it does illustrate the important economic principle of agglomeration and explains why there is such a widening divide in the UK economy.

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The latest issue of Insight is now available to view online

by • Facilities management, Newsletter, Workplace, Workplace design

Clerkenwell design weekIn this week’s Insight newsletter, available to view online; Workplace Insight confirms a partnership agreement with Europe’s largest commercial interior design event, Clerkenwell Design Week [pictured]; evidence that employees who use treadmill workstations as they work not only receive physical benefits but also are more productive; and research finds that our brains are adapting to the changing demands placed on them by technology.  Simon Heath presents part two of his field guide to workplace terminology and Demitri Maldonado explains why FM has to embrace its softer side, focus on people skills and develop them to ensure success. We also present a gallery of stunning images showcasing Google’s new offices in Kuala Lumpur. To automatically receive our weekly newsletter, simply add your email address to the box on the home page.

Research finds the treadmill desk improves wellness and productivity

by • Facilities management, News, Workplace

Workplace fitness

Despite employers offering staff access to a gym to help promote wellness, actually getting people to use the fitness facilities is another matter. The answer could be to bring the fitness equipment directly to their office; as new research shows that employees who use treadmill workstations as they work not only receive physical benefits but also are more productive. According to a recently published study by researchers from The University of Texas at Arlington, the Mayo Clinic and the University of Minnesota, sedentary employees from a non-profit financial service company who had their current cubicles and offices outfitted with treadmill desks were found to burn an average of 74 more calories per day than they did before they received the treadmill workstation. They were also found to be more productive. (more…)

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