Columnists

Why facilities managers deserve a seat at the design table

by • Comment, Facilities management, Furniture, Workplace design

For a long time there has been a distant relationship between facilities management (FM) and design, with FM treated as a post occupancy issue rather than a valuable consideration during the design process. The truth is that effective collaboration between facilities managers and designers can yield innovation and even better product design, be that in relation […]

Artists sing about office furniture. Part 3 – Arctic Monkeys

by • Comment, Furniture

[embedplusvideo height=”230″ width=”210″ standard=”https://www.youtube.com/v/5zqTI6S-pMI?fs=1″ vars=”ytid=5zqTI6S-pMI&width=210&height=230&start=&stop=&rs=w&hd=0&autoplay=0&react=1&chapters=&notes=” id=”ep1560″ /] Something for the weekend. Or at least something for those of you who might be moving office this weekend. The Arctic Monkeys sing not only about office furniture, but create the great rock anthem for the facilities manager – not to mention all those who on Monday will […]

Guidance on designing in accessibility for disabled workers

by • Comment, Facilities management, Knowledge, Legal news, Workplace design

The government launches a campaign today using TV celebrities and disabled groups to help promote positive role models for disabled people. It’s aimed at building on the latest stats that show 81 per cent of people thought the Paralympics had a positive impact on the way disabled people are perceived. Currently they’re not well represented […]

Flexible working boosts employee satisfaction and lowers business costs

by • Comment, Knowledge, Technology, Workplace

May 2013 played host to Work Wise Week, an initiative from Work Wise UK that aimed to promote and encourage smarter working practices to the benefit of businesses and employees. Cultural, economic and social changes are affecting attitudes to how we balance work and personal lives, and increasingly, mobility and technology is shifting away the […]

Office hierarchy determines ergonomic quality of workplace

by • Comment, Facilities management, Furniture, Knowledge, News, Technology

When you consider health and safety dangers at work, there is really no contest between the risks blue collar workers face – falls from height, heavy lifting and breathing in asbestos dust – compared to the relatively minor mishaps of the average office worker. But it seems there is no such thing as an ‘average’ […]

Artists sing about office furniture. Part 2 – My Chemical Romance

by • Comment, Furniture, Workplace design

[embedplusvideo height=”230″ width=”210″ standard=”https://www.youtube.com/v/BS2InBvlIto?fs=1″ vars=”ytid=BS2InBvlIto&width=210&height=185&start=&stop=&rs=w&hd=0&autoplay=0&react=1&chapters=&notes=” id=”ep8069″ /]   Roger Carr writes: I always like “Furniture music” by Bill Nelson’s Red Noise – but upon listening to it again it could be domestic furniture too. But “Cubicles” by “My Chemical Romance” is surely about the lonely disassociated world of the (unrequited) love sick office cubicle dweller.It’s […]

Artists sing about office furniture. Part 1 – Harry Nilsson

by • Comment, Furniture

[embedplusvideo height=”230″ width=”200″ standard=”https://www.youtube.com/v/yOmZeXIVqTk?fs=1″ vars=”ytid=yOmZeXIVqTk&width=200&height=230&start=&stop=&rs=w&hd=0&autoplay=0&react=1&chapters=&notes=” id=”ep1699″ /] Given the complete and utter failure of the world’s artists to draw inspiration from office furniture, this is likely to be the shortest series we’ve ever run. It will start and end here. I’d love to be proved wrong but there cannot be many artists prepared to use […]

CBRE WorkShop concept is interesting, but is it workable?

by • Comment, Property, Technology, Workplace, Workplace design

I’d like to deal in this article with the arrival yesterday of the long-awaited white paper from CBRE’s thought leadership exercise, The CBRE Workshop. However, I should declare an interest for the sake of transparency. Until June 2012 I was employed by CBRE and reported directly to a couple of the people who are heavily […]

HS2 – still a train that symbolises the clash of old and new ways of working

by • Comment, Technology, Workplace

[embedplusvideo height=”160″ width=”210″ standard=”https://www.youtube.com/v/audakxABYUc?fs=1″ vars=”ytid=audakxABYUc&width=290&height=191&start=&stop=&rs=w&hd=0&autoplay=0&react=0&chapters=&notes=” id=”ep9359″ /] We’ve said this before but given the recent round of agonising over HS2 and today’s news that it will already cost £10 bn more than planned, there is no end yet to us hearing more and more about the plans for the Government’s flagship construction project and all-round Keynesian boot in […]

Will the Great Trade Association Merger have any impact on office design?

by • Comment, Facilities management, Property, Workplace design

Anybody who has been working in and around the facilities management sector for any length of time will know that the FM profession/discipline (delete as appropriate) regularly undergoes protracted periods of existential angst about its role. It strikes me however that this is actually quite an easy question to deal with because the answer is […]

How ingrained assumptions about the workplace are eroding

by • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace design

The first day at a new job used to mean getting the answer to that all important question: “so which is my office?”  In today’s mostly open plan environments, the same psychological attachment has been transferred to the desk – ‘my’ desk. However the current trend for flexible approaches to where people work means that […]

Green Office Week kicks off with a focus on individual behaviour

by • Comment, Environment

This week is Green Office Week. Obviously it’s corporate sponsored, self-designated and arbitrarily timed with all the ways that leaves it open to criticism. It also offers pretty standard advice for the most part and many people and organisations will be well aware of it.  What is interesting is that so much of the advice is […]

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