Search Results for: construction

April 1, 2016

HS2 & Fourth Industrial Revolution + Digital natives + FM outsourcing rise ⁰

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, Flexible working, Newsletter, Technology, Workplace

In the latest Insight Newsletter; Richard Morris questions why the UK still persists with the 9-5 mantra; Sara Bean argues HR must treat people like humans, not resources; Mark Eltringham says the construction of the HS2 high speed rail line ignores the fact that technology is fast negating its very existence and wonders why the woefully anachronistic and dated Display Screen Equipment regulations are still in use. News that the outsourcing of real estate and facilities management has hit record levels; flexible working is the key to Hong Kong’s record number of startups; firms are betting on millennials to plug their digital knowledge gaps and worklife balance is a major draw for US workers. Download our Insight Briefing, produced in partnership with Connection, on how the boundless office can be freed from the shackles of time and place and access the latest issue of Work&Place. Visit our new events page, follow us on Twitter and join our LinkedIn Group to discuss these and other stories.

March 31, 2016

Government needs to wise up to the Fourth Industrial Revolution ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Property, Public Sector, Technology

Last week, the UK Government passed the latest bill to pave the way for the creation of HS2, the high speed rail line that will initially connect London with Birmingham and later cities like Sheffield, Manchester and Leeds. Most of the criticisms of the line are focussed on its financial and environmental costs, impact on the wider rail network and (frankly poor) design. We can grant the project’s proponents all of their arguments countering those points and still we are left with a perhaps more fundamental problem. We are now committed to creating a train that will monopolise the resources available to public transport for the next twenty years and exist for more than a hundred, but without considering the world in which it will arrive. I’d go further and suggest that even as its tracks are laid, the world around it will already have left it behind, leaving it as an impressive but doomed testament to hubris, old tech and failure of imagination.

March 22, 2016

While politicians squabble, here’s what the Budget meant for the workplace ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management, Legal news, Workplace, Workplace design

Strange as it may seem now, there was a Budget last week. We’d planned to produce a report on it once the dust had settled but given that whatever dust had originally been kicked up has now been swept away by a political storm, it’s only now we feel able to offer some perspective a few days out. As ever these days, the budget touched on a number of aspects of the workplace, sometimes hitting the mark and sometimes suggesting politicians don’t yet understand how people work. There was the usual stuff about rates and commercial property but also plenty to digest about the freelance economy, productivity, new technology, flexible working legislation and the current, often faltering attempts to develop wealth and infrastructure as well as the 21st Century creative and digital economy in places other than London. There’s plenty to digest here and plenty of people have already had their say, so a chance to grab a coffee and take all or some of it in.

March 22, 2016

Manchester refurbished office market thrives due to occupier demand ⁰

by Sara Bean • Cities, Facilities management, News, Property, Workplace design

Approximately 625,000 sq ft (58,063 sq m) of office space in Manchester is set to be refurbished over the next two years as the market responds to continuing demand. According to Savills, Grade B has accounted for an average of 62 percent of the city’s annual take up over the last 10 years, and with Grade A supplies running low the proportion could be even higher in 2016. Despite growing demand for Grade A office space in Manchester over the last three years, annual take up has consistently been under pinned by larger Grade B occupiers seeking to balance high quality offices with value for money. Savills also reports that the TMT sector has taken more Grade B space in Manchester than any other sector over the last five years, with deals totalling 710,889 sq ft (66,042 sq m); a significant increase on the 294,631 sq ft (27,371 sq m) of secondary space let to TMT occupiers in the previous five years.

March 16, 2016

A new guide to delivering successful sustainable fit-out projects ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Environment, Facilities management, News, Workplace design

Today marks the publication of a new guide which claims to help contractors and end-users deliver sustainable fit-out projects. Published by trade body the Construction Industry Research and Information Association (CIRIA), the Fit-out environmental good practice on site guide (C757) claims to be a more practical guide than other publications and standards and addresses the most important challenges for those responsible for fit-outs across a range of sectors including offices, retail, education, leisure and health. The authors claim that the fit-out sector faces unique challenges that include the need for a quick turnaround of projects, the need to control costs as well as deal with project specific site constraints. The guide aims to help the managers of fit-out projects to meet these challenges as well as helping them to deliver projects that are sustainable both during the fit-out phase, occupancy and the life of the completed project.

March 10, 2016

Rents stabilise in London, but occupiers will pay premiums for views ⁰

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, News, Property

Demand for office space across prime Central London remains strong, with 3.4m sq ft of lettings recorded in Q4 2015, according to the latest Office Market Bulletin from Cluttons. However, even with continued high demand, prime rents have started to flatten, with rent rises seen in only six of 18 submarkets. While Canary Wharf witnessed a rental hike of 5.6 percent during Q4, underpinned by occupiers who are willing to move further away from the core, particularly for large floorplates, to areas perceived to offer good value; in contrast, the City Core, which already has a high amount of good quality space, appears to be struggling to absorb the large increase of supply coming through, causing rents to stabilise. And towards the end of 2015 further developments within the City were announced which, if completed, could lead to a supply glut. Across the markets though, the top floors in the best schemes are attracting an increasing rent premium of 5-10 percent.

March 2, 2016

Why WELL rather than green is the new black in building design ⁰

by Darren Bilsborough • Comment, Environment, Facilities management, Wellbeing, Workplace design

Businesses that seek to occupy premium or grade A office accommodation are traditionally seduced by the next big thing. What was once a bespoke architectural design, then became an icon, a taller building, one made of glass and finally the inevitable iconic, tall, glass tower. Now it seems a good number of those businesses have moved on to green buildings as a must have upgrade to the skyscrapers of glass and steel. Green, it appears, is the new black. But is that really the next big thing or is being green merely the last big thing? Even worse, does going green in terms of building design actually deliver the types of benefits that an occupier or landlord was anticipating, beyond the significance of branding and an alignment with grade A quality office space? The green building narrative is a particularly powerful one and the growth of LEED and BREEAM rated buildings over the last decade is proof of that power.

February 26, 2016

War for talent and dwindling supply in London boosts regional office market ⁰

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, News, Property, Workplace

London office supply is at an all-time low according to JLL’s latest research, with around 18 million sq ft of offices required, but less than 7 million sq ft under construction. This is one of the reasons why 2015 saw a surge in pre-leasing activity across the Big 6 regional office markets, comprising Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds, Manchester, Glasgow and Edinburgh, with 850,000 sq ft let across 17 transactions compared with 15 over the five years from 2010-14. The survey shows that rental growth and refurbishment are key themes with refurbishment schemes totalling 800,000 sq ft will be delivered in 2016, with a further 10 new schemes totalling one million sq ft due to start. Greater convergence between HR and real estate also means the war for talent is a factor influencing occupier decision making. CEOs continue to cite a shortage of skills as a concern, as many Gen Z students are expected to leave their first job within a few years.

February 17, 2016

Younger workers more engaged at work than middle aged staff ⁰

by Sara Bean • News, Workplace

Companies with stronger financial performances and better customer experience have employees who are considerably more engaged than their peers, a new survey by Temkin Group claims. The research also shows that out of all the industries, the construction sector has the highest percentage of engaged employees. Organisations with 501 to 1,000 employees have the highest percentage of engaged employees and companies with 10,000 or more employees have the lowest level of engagement. Employees who are highly educated, high-income earners, executives, male, and have very good bosses tend to be the most highly engaged. 63 percent of highly engaged employees always try their hardest at work, compared with 42 percent of disengaged employees. And for those who doubt the commitment of millennials – 25- to 34-year-old employees are the most engaged group, while 45- to 54-year-old employees are the least engaged.

February 15, 2016

UK commercial buildings emit far more carbon than they were designed to ⁰

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

Commercial buildings in the UK may be producing an average of 3.8 times more carbon than the estimate presented at their design stage, according to research from InnovateUK. The study examined six years of data from Innovate UK’s Building Performance Evaluation (BPE) Programme. It found that only one of the 48 buildings studied produced the amount of carbon specified by its design. In some cases, total emissions were 10 times the rate calculated for Part L compliance. ‘Building Performance Evaluation Programme: Findings From Non-Domestic Projects’, identifies complex energy controls and building management systems (BMS) as significant factors in poor levels of carbon emissions, suggesting that they should be simplified. Although two-thirds of the buildings studied employed renewable energy, a significant proportion of these experienced problems that had a negative impact on their energy consumption and carbon emissions.

February 15, 2016

The death of the office meme does not fit with a thriving property market ⁰

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

You don’t have to look very far to find somebody or other proclaiming the death of the office. A quick Google search will come up with over 73 million results for the past year alone. This has been going on for decades, but a search engine now gives us a far better idea than the occasional feature in a trade magazine of just how the idea has evolved into a full-blown meme. The narrative has become so entrenched that the people who use it – typically the ignorant, the self-interested, the lazy and the ill-informed – rarely have their premise challenged. Usually it is an idea appended to some disruptive and supposedly apocalyptic trend and, at the moment, office kryptonite comes in the form of coworking, where once it was flexible working or mobile technology. And yet, for all the non-fatal wounds these innovations have inflicted on the traditional office, the idea of people travelling to work alongside each other in shared buildings endures.

February 11, 2016

Manchester set to run out of Grade A office space this year, claims report ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Cities, News, Property

Manchester could completely run out of ready to occupy, Grade A office space this year, according to a new report from Colliers International. The snapshot of the commercial property market in the city claims that take-up of space in Manchester during 2015 was over a third (37.5 percent) above a ten year average and the rate of occupation by both UK and overseas firms was double that of the previous three years. As a consequence, the local property market is currently unable to keep pace with demand and the availability of Grade A space declined by 61 percent during the year to reach its lowest level since 2006. There is now just 216,000sq ft of Grade A stock available to let in Central Manchester, with major new developments in the key Spinningfields district (above) and elsewhere not expected to complete until later this year and into 2018. Even some of these spaces are already let, according to the study.