Search Results for: commercial

March 13, 2014

Gallery: Google’s Kuala Lumpur office offers an alternative vision of a tech palace

Mention the offices of Google (or Facebook or Apple) and you’re perhaps most likely to think of the latest generation of gleaming Xanadu-like corporate tech palaces now being planned or built in London or California. But the new offices of Google in Kuala Lumpur offer a distinctly different vision. Designed by M Moser Associates, this is a compact community space centred on a cafe, meeting rooms and retro gaming zone. The pre-school acid colours and shapes, regionalised biomimicry, exposed building services, toys and knowing use of vintage decor are all familiar elements of a design aimed at young(ish) techies and creatives, but the main drivers for the revamp are the equally familiar commercial needs to consolidate a previously dispersed workforce into a single space and give them a choice of zones in which to interact. (more…)

March 13, 2014

Insight confirms partnership with Clerkenwell Design Week

by Mark Eltringham • Architecture, Events, Flooring, Furniture, Lighting, Workplace design

Workplace Insight has confirmed a partnership agreement with Europe’s largest commercial interior design event, Clerkenwell Design Week. The event takes place each year, uniquely using the showrooms and other spaces that make the Clerkenwell area of London home to more creative businesses, designers and architects per square mile than anywhere else on the planet. It is also part of the East London Tech City hub. Now in its fifth year, the 2013 event attracted 50,000 registered attendees and thousands of others visitors. Insight will be covering the event, which will take place from 20 – 22 May, focussing especially on the intellectual content that forms a central element of the week’s content. We will be inviting the many eminent speakers and commentators to share thoughts and ideas in the build up and aftermath.

March 7, 2014

Large and small firms demand greater transparency in government procurement

by Mark Eltringham • Company news, Facilities management

The whole thorny issue of public sector procurement is never far from the news, but this week gained new prominence as one contractor walked out on a £1 billion contract because it felt the Ministry of Justice hadn’t grasped the idea of intellectual property amongst other things, while the Confederation of British Industry raised the stakes overall by claiming that a culture of secrecy in government purchasing continues to foster mistrust and waste taxpayers’ money. The CBI goes so far as to claim that even the most high profile botched contracts over recent years have not deterred the government from its move to inculcate a culture of opacity rather than transparency when procuring goods and services. It called on the Government to move to open book contracts so that all parties are aware of contract terms and margins.

(more…)

March 5, 2014

New data suggests that London no longer belongs to the UK, but the World

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, News, Property

One of the subjects touched on in the first episode of Evan Davis’s BBC documentary series about the economic distinctions between London and the rest of the UK Mind the Gap was the impact of investment by the global super-rich into London property. At one point he asked the Malaysian investor behind the £8 billion Battersea Power Station redevelopment whether he’d considered investing in other cities in the UK. The response was a straight no, but the accompanying glance said rather more. London is no longer a British city but one that belongs to the world, it said, so any comparison with Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds, Cardiff and Edinburgh is meaningless. You might disagree with this point of view, but a raft of new data appears to make it very evident indeed that London is now shaped by global plutocrats in a way that cannot be mirrored in the rest of the UK.

(more…)

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.

(more…)

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.

(more…)

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.

(more…)

February 7, 2014

Looming resource constraints go way beyond carbon, warns the Carbon Trust

by Sara Bean • Environment, Facilities management, News

Sustainability in business must expand to meet future demands on resources. These constraints will go way beyond energy management, but include water, waste and land-use; for example there could be a 40 per cent gap between available water supplies and water needs by 2030, and some critical materials could be in short supply as soon as 2016. Organisations that adapt their business models by assessing their exposure to such resource constraints can identify how to manage these risks and exploit commercial opportunities. In turn this will improve efficiency, strengthen long-term resilience, and drive business returns. So says the Carbon Trust’s new report, Opportunities in an resource constrained world, which has profiled four of its customers: Whitbread, BT, Stagecoach, and Bord Bia and sets out some of the steps they have taken on sustainability. (more…)

February 6, 2014

London office rents are set to reach historic high by 2018

by Sara Bean • News, Property

London office rents are set to reach an historic high by 2018, fuelled by demand from the technology, media and telecoms (TMT) sector. Demand for office space by technology and media firms across central London was more than double of the finance sector in 2013, with major deals signed by Google, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, News Corp, and Ogilvy & Mather. According to data from Knight Frank, record levels of overseas investment are helping London build its reputation as a global hub. Geographically, it is not just the City and the West End that are seeing a massive surge in demand; take-up in Docklands increased by nearly 20 per cent last year, while completely new districts are emerging which include London Bridge, Battersea and Nine Elms. (more…)

January 31, 2014

Economic recovery may be constrained by lack of skills and office space

by Mark Eltringham • Property, Technology, Workplace

There are signs that the nascent recovery in the UK economy is already starting to put pressure on the availability of skilled employees and appropriate commercial property for the most rapidly growing sectors. While the Government has announced that the UK’s economy has been growing at its fastest rate since 2007, a new survey published by the UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES ) has claimed that nearly a quarter of vacancies in the UK have gone unfilled because of a shortage of much-needed skills. At the same time, claims a new report from DTZ, demand for commercial property is strengthening with take-up growing across the country while the availability of Grade A office space is declining rapidly.

(more…)

January 23, 2014

DEFRA confirms Montagu Evans is to manage its UK-wide estate

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, News, Public Sector

In one of the largest public sector portfolios to be re-tendered in recent years, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has appointed Montagu Evans to manage its UK-wide commercial estate. Montagu Evans takes over the three-year contract to manage the estates from DTZ, which has been advising Defra in its role as estates asset manager for the past four-and-a-half years. Montagu Evans will take over the management of the estates, which consists of over 180 properties, from 1 March 2014. Montagu Evans managing partner Steve Thomas said: “We are delighted to have secured such an important appointment. We have been highly impressed with the Defra team and believe there is an excellent fit with Montagu Evans’ tradition of delivering high-quality services.”