Search Results for: office

November 3, 2014

More London convention one of highlights of Workplace Week, which starts today

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, News, Workplace design

More London convention highlight of Workplace Week

PwC More London Offices

Tours of Google, Mintel and Lloyds of London are just some of the highlights of Workplace Week, the annual week-long celebration of workplace innovation which starts today. Organised by AWA to raise money for Children in Need, the inaugural Workplace Week in 2009 happened after Andrew Mawson, AWA’s managing director, had the idea for a workplace-related event raising money for the charity. This year’s week includes a programme of 90 minute ‘working workplace’ tours involving some of the UK’s most innovative workplaces; including Google, Mintel, Innocent Drinks, BDO, Edelman, Lloyds of London, Guardian Newspapers, CBI, Invesco, Prostate Cancer, and PWC Embankment Place. The week will also feature a one-day convention at PWC’s More London office near London Bridge on Thursday 6 November entitled, ‘the Work/place Revolution….taking human performance to new levels’. The focus here will be on taking human performance to new levels, with a range of speakers offering case studies, insights and new research. More →

November 3, 2014

Scalpel achieves excellent rating under new BREEAM environmental standard

by Mark Eltringham • Environment, News, Property

The first building to achieve an excellent rating under the new BREEAM UK New Construction 2014 standard is Kohn Kohn Pedersen Fox’s design of the Scalpel tower in the City of London. The £500 million building at 52 Lime Street is a 190m tall 35-floor office tower which is set to open in 2017. The new building was granted planning consent in early 2013 and will offer around 500,000 sq. ft. of commercial space in the City. Andrew Reynolds, managing director of developers WRBC Development, said he was “delighted” the scheme had received such a high rating under the new BREEAM environmental standard. Our team is determined to deliver a high performance building that is not only architecturally superb but creates a pleasant and productive environment for those who will be working there.” Gavin Dunn, director of BREEAM, said: “this achievement demonstrates a genuine commitment by the project team to deliver a high-quality development that will benefit the building owners and occupiers into the future.”

November 3, 2014

BIM adoption set to soar in UK and US over next two years, claims report

by Mark Eltringham • Architecture, Facilities management, News, Property, Technology, Workplace design

Building owners are embracing building information modelling (BIM) as a powerful technology benefitting the design process, managing project schedules, controlling costs and minimizing project errors, according to the recent McGraw-Hill Construction SmartMarket Report “The Business Value of BIM for Owners”. The latest report focuses on the business value of BIM from the perspective of building owners in the United States and United Kingdom for whom the technology has been deployed. Initially adopted as a design tool and later evolving into an important tool for contractors, its adoption among building owners is expanding, the report claims, and that building owners are becoming more directly involved as “their power is even greater to align BIM use with their specific goals, engage more effectively with all stakeholders and extend the value of BIM beyond construction into facility management.” The study claims that 40 percent of US owners and 38 percent of UK owners expect that more than 75 percent of their projects will involve the technology in just two years.

November 2, 2014

The safety regulations to consider when designing a new workspace

by Tom Grey • Comment, Legal news, Property

There’s no doubt about it, designing and managing a new workspace is a challenge at the best of times. With so many different aspects to consider, designers must create a space that is both aesthetically pleasing to work in, while ensuring that the safety of the people working in the building, and the public exposed to the redesign work, is being prioritised. Designing and managing a building project is a lengthy process that requires meticulous planning to make sure you are fully equipped. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is frequently assessing the safety credentials of refurbishment projects and has demonstrated in the past that it is not afraid to dish out hefty fines to companies that fail to abide by the UK’s health and safety laws. Avoid any unwanted surprises by doing your homework, completing a risk assessment and creating a strategy of how you will complete the project in a safe, efficient manner.

October 31, 2014

UK Government announces new research programme into workplace wellbeing

by Mark Eltringham • News, Public Sector, Workplace, Workplace design

The UK Government’s interest in what makes us happy continues unabated with the news that it has officially launched its new What Works Centre for Wellbeing. The centre will commission researchers to study ‘the impact that different interventions and services have on wellbeing’. It will focus initially on work and learning, communities, cultural and sporting activities. It claims that the results of the research will help the government, councils, health and wellbeing boards, charities and businesses make decisions on what ‘really matters for the wellbeing of people, communities and the nation as a whole’. The centre is the latest addition to the What Works Network, which was launched by the government last year to improve public services through evidence-based policy. It builds on the work of the Office for National Statistics which has been tasked with measuring national wellbeing, and of the Commission on Wellbeing and Policy.

October 29, 2014

The business case for green building widens to cover wellness and productivity

by Alison Kitchingman • Comment, Environment, Facilities management, Workplace design

The debate about the economic, commercial and social benefits of green building design continues to evolve rapidly. Where once it was primarily focussed on environmental issues and related cost savings, the world’s major champions of eco-building are now making the case for sophisticated building design that has a broader range of benefits for organisations and individuals. The most significant report in this regard for some years has just been published by the World Green Building Council (WorldGBC). Its study Health, Wellbeing and Productivity in Offices: The Next Chapter for Green Building offers “overwhelming evidence” for the ways in which office design significantly impacts the health, happiness, wellbeing and productivity of people.The report covers a wide range of that influence the wellness, job satisfaction and performance of office workers. It identifies the ways in which these undoubted benefits add a new layer of sophistication to the case for organisations to invest in better, healthier and greener buildings.

October 28, 2014

Great Place to Work Institute reveals world’s best multinational workplaces

by Mark Eltringham • News, Workplace

Google Offices in Amsterdam

The Great Place to Work Institute has released its latest list of the 25 multinational companies that it believes are “leading the way into a more hopeful economic age”. The full list is available on the organisation’s convoluted and impenetrable website and as part of a new report, The Dawn of the Great Workplace Era, which describes a world in which “all people can expect to work for an organization where they trust their leaders, enjoy their colleagues and take pride in what they do”. This year’s list of firms has been chosen from 6,200 companies worldwide based on employee surveys and an assessment of each company’s policies. The Top Five for 2014 – Google, SAS Institute, NetApp, W L Gore and Associates and Belcorp – have been ranked as the top multinational workplaces, “for demonstrating rising levels of trust, camaraderie and pride.” These are the companies that “are taking steps to ensure that promotions go to those who best deserve them, to increase transparency, and to encourage employees to balance work and life,” according to China Gorman, CEO of Great Place to Work.

October 23, 2014

Half of women would consider remaining childless rather than risk career

by Sara Bean • Flexible working, Legal news, News, Workplace

The expansion of flexible working rights was not only intended to improve workplace wellbeing and productivity, but encourage mothers to remain in the workforce. But it seems there is much work to be done to convince women that work and motherhood can mix. New research from the Association of Accounting Technicians (AAT) has found that half of women believe that having a baby poses such a risk to their career that they would consider remaining childless. The survey among women of childbearing age also found that two-thirds of women (67%) are concerned about the impact that having children might have on their career and half of the women who don’t currently have children (49%) feel their current career doesn’t offer them the flexibility they would need to care for a family. Over half of mothers (55%) admitted that balancing childcare and work has been a barrier to staying in work, with one in five (20%) stating that a lack of support from their employer has made life as a working mum more difficult. More →

October 21, 2014

Orgatec preview: the next generation workplace is all about settings

by Justin Miller • Comment, Events, Products, Workplace design

There is a well travelled international circuit for those interested in what office design tells us about the way we work that has, for a number of years, taken in London, Milan, Chicago, Stockholm and Cologne as its main stopping off points. This week sees the launch of Orgatec, the longstanding biennial workplace festival in Cologne. One of the interesting features of Orgatec is that, because it takes place every two years, it offers snapshots of key developments in the market. It throws a spotlight on whatever workplace professionals are talking about and whatever product designers are doing in response to the changing world of work. And it does it on a big scale. This year over 600 companies from 40 countries will be presenting across an exhibition area of 105,000 sq. m. This seems big, and is, but is down markedly on the size of the show from 20 years ago when Orgatec was the launch pad for seminal products such as Herman Miller’s Aeron Chair and the Ad Hoc furniture system from Vitra.

October 17, 2014

Firms downsizing property dramatically as agile working takes hold, claims new report

by Mark Eltringham • Facilities management, Flexible working, Property, Workplace design

The sharp reduction in the amount of office space used by corporate occupiers as they adopt more agile working practices has been confirmed in a new study from facilities management services provider MITIE. The survey, as reported in the British Institute of Facilities Management (BIFM) magazine FM World, found that between the years of 2008 and 2014 firms reduced their floorspace by an average of 45 percent. The results of the report, based on interviews with property directors, mirror those of the Occupier Density Survey published last year by the British Council for Offices (BCO) which also found a marked (if smaller) reduction. The authors of the MITIE report conclude, similarly, that the economic downturn has been the main catalyst for the reduction in property used by occupiers and that the main way firms have accommodated the fall is with the uptake of flexible working practices.

October 17, 2014

The solution to complex issues like green building is to become more sophisticated

by Paul Goodchild • Comment, Environment, Facilities management, Workplace design

One of the current preoccupations of the World Green Building Council is to demonstrate how green business is good business. The way it is presenting this argument is intriguing because as well as extolling the most anticipated benefits of green building design, such as lower energy bills, it is linking green building design with human factors such as productivity, wellness and work-life balance. It has produced a number of reports on this subject, most recently in September with a publication titled Health, Wellbeing and Productivity in Offices which found ‘overwhelming evidence’ of the link between office design and productivity. What such compelling reports also highlight are the complex challenges we face and the sophisticated approach we must take to environmental issues and corporate social responsibility. Fortunately this is already exhibited by many organisations.

October 15, 2014

Employers unready to meet demand for flexible working in UAE, claims report

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Workplace

According to a new survey from YouGov and Citrix, office workers in the United Arab Emirates are almost universally aware of the benefits of flexible working and increasingly demand it from their employers. Yet under a quarter of organisations ‘encourage and enable’ employees to work away from their main place of work routinely. The report claims that 94 percent of the 800 UAE office workers who took part in the study say they would feel less stressed, be more productive and achieve better balance between work and family responsibilities if they were given the freedom to work flexibly outside of the office. As a result, demand for flexible working has increased by 20 per cent since an equivalent report in 2013, with many UAE workers also indicating that the ability to work from anywhere would significantly increase their job satisfaction. In contrast, only 23 percent of the businesses surveyed fully ‘encourage and enable’ employees to work from anywhere, using any device. More →