July 22, 2020
So, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has told the British people to get back to work by Christmas. This means that millions would be renewing their season tickets, getting up in darkness to dress up for work, crowding onto those trains, buses and tubes while swaddled in facemasks and battling their way into the office (which for the time being will be a pretty dull experience with social distancing). More →
July 17, 2020
In the week the ONS announced that the number of self-employed people in the UK had dropped by 178,000 over the last quarter, a new report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the Institute for Fiscal Study suggests that the growing number of people who turn to self-employment do so despite a drop in their incomes. On average, they earn nearly £500 (30 percent) less a month than they did before falling out of traditional employment. More →
July 16, 2020
The global COVID-19 pandemic has caused unprecedented job losses and economic uncertainty. As governments and businesses look to stimulate growth, a new study from the World Economic Forum claims that ‘nature-positive’ solutions can create 395 million jobs by 2030. The Future of Nature and Business Report says this is a $10.1 trillion business opportunity. More →
July 14, 2020
The UK Green Building Council (UKGBC) has announced a new task group which it says will develop guidance on the procurement of renewable energy and carbon offsets for the built environment sector. This work will build on UKGBC’s Net Zero Carbon Buildings Framework, which was developed to ‘build industry consensus on the definition of a net zero carbon building for both construction and operation’. More →
July 13, 2020
There are so many unknowns about the ways in which the Covid-19 pandemic will shape our world in the coming months and years but what it has highlighted are the strengths and weaknesses in the global and UK economy and their implications for the commercial property sector. In its latest white paper, property consultancy and chartered surveyors Bruceshaw examines the macro and micro economic challenges that will shape the property sector for many years to come. More →
July 7, 2020
London has once again been declared the smartest city in the world, according to the seventh edition of the IESE Cities in Motion Index 2020. New York takes the second spot, followed by Paris. The top 10 list is rounded out by Tokyo, Reykjavik, Copenhagen, Berlin, Amsterdam, Singapore and Hong Kong. More →
July 2, 2020
A new study commissioned by Perkbox of 13,271 employees claims that 93 percent of employees have faced new wellbeing challenges in 2020. The most common being feeling less connected to the company/colleagues, increased loneliness/feelings of isolation and increased financial concerns. The study looks at the wellbeing impacts of the events of 2020. Nearly 73 percent state that coronavirus has negatively impacted their mental health, followed by Brexit (29 percent) and Black Lives Matter (27 percent). More →
June 30, 2020
Around 6 in 10 London commuters will change the way they travel when the return to work begins, research by Addison Lee claims, with COVID-19 safety concerns changing transport demand patterns. More →
June 29, 2020
Research conducted by Bullhorn, suggests that recruiting professionals are optimistic about COVID-19’s future economic impact. According to Bullhorn’s Global Recruitment Insights and Data (GRID) COVID-19 Impact Survey, only two percent predict a sustained depression that extends past 2021, and more than half (56 percent) expect the economy to improve by the end of the year. More →
June 29, 2020
The winners of the annual KI Award, now in its fifth year, were announced in the lead up to the upcoming digital graduation show. The awards and cash prizes are given to final year students selected from the RCA’s ‘Design Products’ and the RCA/Imperial College London’s ‘Innovation Design Engineering’ double masters course. The winning projects showed an outstanding approach to functionality, durability, sustainability and enhancement to user experience for our future working or learning experiences. A summary of each award winner is included below. More →
June 24, 2020
The BBC recently published a piece on its website to commemorate the 40th Anniversary of Ridley Scott’s movie Alien and what it could tell us about office design and the workplace (of whatever sort). One of the interesting points raised in the piece was how the depiction of the conditions on board the spaceship Nostromo did away with the gloss and swish of previous visions of the future, replaced by grime, exposed services and strictly utilitarian interiors. The environment was one of the characters, a trick Ridley Scott later repeated in Bladerunner. More →
July 28, 2020
Containing office costs in the post-lockdown era
by Guy Brett • Comment, Property