Search Results for: office design

March 31, 2017

America’s corporate occupiers streamline portfolios due to economic uncertainty ⁰

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

While talent continues to reign supreme on the list of top concerns for US companies a growing number of respondents to CBRE’s annual Americas Occupier Survey cited economic uncertainty as a top challenge, up from 36 percent in 2016 to 52 percent. As a result, 87 percent of corporate occupiers report that they are managing to this uncertainty by disposing of surplus space and/or implementing more efficient workplace designs to prepare their portfolios for the future. Only 26 percent of respondents expect to expand their portfolios over the next two years, down from 38 percent in the 2016 survey. Approximately one-half of the 2017 survey’s respondents indicated that the size of their portfolios would remain stable with 2016 levels. However, while uncertainty is driving many real estate decisions, creating a workplace experience focused on talent remains top of mind for the majority of occupiers surveyed.

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March 30, 2017

AHMM completes work on New Scotland Yard for Metropolitan Police ⁰

by Neil Franklin • Case studies, Company news, Workplace design

Architects Allford Hall Monaghan Morris (AHMM) have completed design work on the new headquarters for the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) in London. The practice claims that the design ‘supports cultural organisational and conveys a new image for the MPS by creating a building that looks to engage with public and media alike’. The £60m new headquarters is a re-modelling and extension of the Curtis Green Building, a 1930s riverside site in Westminster, central London currently owned by the MPS. AHMM’s design includes the addition of new entrance and rooftop pavilions and a reworking of the existing accommodation. The new entrance is designed ‘to create a welcoming and non-institutional yet secure front door’ and reinstates the iconic revolving sign. The project has been completed as part of a major rethink of the organisation’s corporate real estate strategy.

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March 28, 2017

Post Brexit UK sets out its case at MIPIM 2017 ⁰

by Anna King • Cities, Features, Property

Cannes-based international real estate fair MIPIM has always been a magnet for cities, determined to extoll their virtues to investors, developers and occupiers, but this year the UK was in charm overdrive. Buoyed no doubt in part by the presence of the UK government’s Department of International Trade (DIT), waving its ‘open for business’ flag for UK PLC, many of the towns and cities that would normally have ploughed their own furrow, instead came together to leverage critical mass. So Bradford and Leeds combined, conurbations across the central belt conjoined on a Midlands pavilion, and so on. Whether it was panic or confidence, the net result was an unusually prominent UK presence, up a quarter on last year. Of course the UK is just one nationality among the 24,200 real estate and city professionals from 100 countries who come together in Cannes every March.

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March 16, 2017

A third of home workers say children are their biggest distraction ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Workplace design

Almost a third (28 percent) of those working from home have been distracted by a crying child whilst on a work call, reports Morgan Lovell. In solidarity with Robert E. Kelly, a professor of political science whose Skype interview by the BBC was unexpectedly interrupted by his children, workplace design, fit out and refurbishment specialist Morgan Lovell commissioned a OnePulse poll to find out the biggest disruptions when working from home.
In the survey, a third (33 percent) of respondents working from home stated that the biggest distraction was their children. Other interruptions that featured highly were: pestering pets (18 percent), flatmates (18 percent) and noisy neighbours (16 percent). Of those unable to work from home, 9 percent opted not to because of distractions and a further 44 percent were not allowed to by their bosses.
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March 16, 2017

New guide to creating an accessible and inclusive built environment ⁰

by Neil Franklin • Architecture, Facilities management, News, Workplace design

The Construction Industry Council has published a new guide to creating an accessible and inclusive environment. The guide sets out six principles as suggested by the Office for Disability Issues to ‘guide, support and motivate’ industry professionals. The guide is an initiative that emerged from the Built Environment Professional Education Project – a government project that has been championed by CIC. The aim is to build on the legacy of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games by helping to generate a change in the way skills related to inclusive design are taught in the UK. The aim is that all built environment professionals will receive mandatory, quality teaching about inclusive design so that they can help create inclusive building, places and spaces for future generations.

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March 13, 2017

Workplace strategy, automation and flexible working rising up the corporate agenda ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Facilities management, Flexible working, News, Property

Corporate real estate occupiers must do more to embrace flexible working and identify the sources of competitive advantage offered by their workplaces, according to the newly published Corporate Real Estate (CRE) 2017 trends report from JLL. The study highlights the key issues affecting corporate property needs and requirements this year, and offers occupiers some advice on how to deal with them, including how real estate strategy affects organisational perfomance. As well as flexible working and real estate strategy, the report also considers the consequences of automation, which it suggests will have a significant impact on the way workplaces are designed, occupied and managed within just a few years,

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February 10, 2017

Reflections on the future of work from a mirrored room ⁰

by Neil Usher • Comment, Facilities management, Technology, Workplace design

This is the first of two responses to an excellent article by Antony Slumbers, in this instance offering that his views offer too conservative a view of how technology will shape the future of work. Dr Pangloss, the teacher of metaphysics in Candide, Voltaire’s hilariously sarcastic attack on Leibnizian optimism, offered a timeless and universal explanation of the most cruel and tragic events as “the best of all possible worlds”. I would argue however that far from creating a landscape of optimism, it facilitates a dismissal of all significant change as an irrelevance given that effectively we have no option other than to happily accept it. For example, whether property transitions to a service or remains locked in its existing institutional quagmire, it doesn’t matter. Either way its fine as it’s the best we can hope for. Accept it, happily. A Panglossian future only looks appealing if you’re –well, Dr Pangloss.

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February 3, 2017

Plans unveiled for £1 billion mixed use scheme in East London ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Cities, News, Property

Developers Knight Dragon have unveiled the details of a landmark £1 billion project as part of the Greenwich Peninsula regeneration in East London. Designed by architect and engineering firm Santiago Calatrava, the Peninsula Place development marks the latest shift in London’s shift eastwards. The scheme will total 1.4 million sq ft including a new tube and bus station, theatre, cinema and performance venue, bars, shops and a wellbeing hub. Above this will rise three office towers, apartments and hotels, all connected to the Thames by a new land bridge. The developers claim that Greenwich Peninsula is London’s largest single regeneration project. Over the coming years, the £8.4 billion transformation of the Peninsula will provide 15,720 new homes in seven new neighbourhoods: home to central London’s first major film studio, a new design district, schools, offices, health services and public spaces.

January 24, 2017

The impact of technology on corporate real estate: A Panglossian future? ⁰

by Antony Slumbers • Features, Property, Technology, Workplace design

Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman introduced the concept of Loss Aversion in 1984, highlighting people’s tendency to strongly prefer avoiding losses to acquiring gains. Most studies suggest that losses are twice as powerful, psychologically, as gains. Lose £100 and we will feel a remorse that easily outweighs winning £100. In a similar fashion we find it very hard to see future positives when confronted with short term loses. We understand easily what we have lost but cannot imagine what there is to be gained. Furthermore, as Frederic Bastiat wrote in an 1850 paper, “That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen”, man has a tendency to “pursue a small present good, which will be followed by a great evil to come, rather than a great good to come, at the risk of a small present evil”. Put these together and it is no wonder that, by and large, the future of work, corporate real estate and the workplace is so widely misunderstood.

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January 20, 2017

The facts about sit stand work are already lost in the stream of narrative ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Knowledge, Wellbeing, Workplace design

Toss a sliver of information into the great stream of accepted public narrative and see what happens to it. There it goes, briefly visible on the surface then consumed; part of the stream but no longer to be seen. A perfect example of this is provided by a recent piece of research carried out by the Texas A&M Health Science Center School of Public Health into the effects of standing at work on a small sample of call centre workers. While the results of the study are impressive, notably a 46 percent increase in productivity, by the time the story was reported on Inc.com, the 167 call centre workers had suddenly morphed into ‘everybody’. It should go without saying that the headline ‘Your Productivity Will Increase by 46 percent if You Stand at Your Desk’ does not reflect the conclusions of the original research. The statements by the researchers suggesting that the study is significant with regard to call centre staff but merely indicative of a wider issue go ignored.