Search Results for: real estate

October 1, 2015

US sees biggest jump in working from home since 2008, claims study ⁰

by Neil Franklin • Flexible working, Knowledge, News, Wellbeing

According to an analysis of the just-released 2014 American Community Survey (ACS) conducted by GlobalWorkplaceAnalytics.com, approximately 3.7 million US employees (2.5 percent of the workforce) called home their primary place of work in 2014. This represents a 6.5 percent increase and the largest year over year growth in the number of people working from home since before the recession. The ACS data is based on a nationwide survey of answers to the question “What was your primary means of travel to work during the survey week—’Worked at Home’ is one of the choices. The count only includes those who work at home at least half of the time. According to Global Workplace Analytics far more people work at home on a less frequent basis and many work in “third places” such as coffee shops, co-working facilities, libraries, and just about anywhere there’s an internet connection.

September 10, 2015

Five ways in which your colleagues might be driving you completely nuts ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, News, Wellbeing, Workplace

It’s always worth reminding ourselves that while a well designed workplace and favourable working conditions are very desirable prerequisites of a good job, what really makes work enjoyable and what really makes a great culture are the people with whom we work. This simple fact is one reason why some people are happy in poorly designed offices full of all the things that supposedly make them unhappy and unwell, while other people can be miserable in airy, daylit, tastefully furnished corporate palaces. Just as Peter Drucker once said that culture eats strategy for breakfast, we also know that it washes it down with a piping hot mug of office design. Culture is defined in large measure by the people around us, it can be they who determine how much we enjoy work. Here are just five ways they can drive us nuts based on recent data.

August 31, 2015

BSI revises design and construction standard for facilities managers ⁰

by Neil Franklin • Architecture, Facilities management, News, Property

BSI, the UK based organisation responsible for developing and publishing standards for businesses, has revised BS 8536-1 Briefing for design and construction: Code of practice for facilities management (Buildings infrastructure). The standard has been included in the Level 2 BIM package which the Government expects companies to offer when tendering for Government contracts. The standard has now been brought into line with the principles of the Soft Landings Framework and Government Soft Landings (GSL) post occupancy evaluation and BIM requirement. Soft landings is designed to enable the transition from design and construction into operation. It advocates collaboration during briefing, design, construction and handover between the design and construction team and the operator, operations team or facilities manager.

August 25, 2015

Flexible working and coworking are disrupting property markets worldwide ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Property

Coworking space and the growth of flexible are already having a major disruptive effect on commercial property markets worldwide, according to a study from real estate trade association CoreNet Global. The survey of members representing a diverse range of sectors found that the two most disruptive trends in the market over the short to medium term are flexible working environments (64 percent) and new technology (64 percent). The report, which has been issued to CoreNet members ahead of the organisation’s 2015 EMEA Summit which will take place in London in September, claims that coworking spaces are capitalising on these trends to have a major disruptive effect on local property markets and are particularly attractive to occupiers from specific sectors such as those working in financial technology.

August 10, 2015

London is leading the way in the global coworking revolution ⁰

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

Changing attitudes amongst occupiers towards office space and the explosion in the numbers of freelance workers and microbusinesses are driving an upsurge in coworking and other flexible working environments worldwide. That is the key conclusion of a new report from DTZ which claims that the number of dedicated flexible working locations worldwide is likely to hit 50,000 over the next three years, with parts of London leading the way. We reported recently how coworking pioneer WeWork has already announced its plans to dominate London’s commercial property scene in the same way it already does Manhattan’s. Now, the How You Work report from DTZ suggests that this is the shape of things to come for many cities, with London leading the way alongside a tranche of global tech and creative centres such as New York, Berlin and Shanghai.

July 29, 2015

Public sector lagging behind in use of technology and flexible working

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Public Sector, Technology

As we reported last week, the UK public sector is embracing some interesting new ideas in the way it uses real estate, especially its commitment to get rid of some of it by adopting flexible working and shared space. However, it’s one thing looking to use space in more flexible ways but without the technological infrastructure, it’s hard to see how they will be able to achieve as much as they could. It is in this regard that they are lagging behind their contemporaries in the private sector, according to a new report from O2 and YouGov. While the report, Redefining selling, serving and working, offers up the usual appeals for us all to make more use of the sorts of things O2 wants us to buy, there is plenty of interesting detail to tease out once the pinch of salt has been applied, not least how business practices and the way people use technology vary across sectors.

July 24, 2015

Growth in demand for scarce office space will lead to rents rise

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, News, Property

Demand from business for commercial property rose for the eleventh consecutive quarter, while available space fell for the ninth successive period, according to the latest RICS Commercial Market Survey. As a result, rents are expected to rise at the fastest pace since the survey began in 1998 with 46 percent more respondents forecasting higher, rather than lower, rent rates going forward. Offices remain the segment of the market where rental expectations remain most buoyant, while retail continues to lag, although even in this area, momentum is picking up. Across the whole of the UK, but excluding the capital, 95 percent of respondents believe that current commercial market valuations are either at or below fair value (roughly unchanged since Q1 2015). However, in London 50 percent of contributors now feel that commercial office space valuations are ‘expensive’ – an increase from 45 percent in the first quarter of this year.

July 14, 2015

Occupiers give big thumbs down to service levels from property sector

by Neil Franklin • Facilities management, News, Property

The property sector offers its customers pretty appalling customer service, according to a ‘damning’ new report from the British Council of Offices (BCO). The study, based on the experiences of just 64 occupiers claims that fewer than one in five (17 percent) rate their property management service as “good” or “excellent” and fewer than one in three feeling that their suppliers understood their business needs. The survey found that although customer service is lacking, satisfaction with the end product itself was high, with two out of three occupiers happy with the quality of their office and three out of four perceiving quality to have improved over the past 10 years. The report sets out a 10-point action plan to improve the service occupiers receive, including adopting a new definition of “building performance” set by the BCO and encouraging more transparency.

July 10, 2015

Local authority staff frustrated by poor quality working environments

by Mark Eltringham • Public Sector, Wellbeing, Workplace design

Employees at UK local authorities are frustrated at their poor quality working environments and councils are suffering as a result, claims a new study from the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS). Over two thirds (68 percent) of employees polled for the report claim their workplaces need to be upgraded and nearly all (92 percent) said they take the standard of workplace into account when deciding where to work. Furthermore, 80 percent of current employees claim they take the standard of working environment into account when making decisions about whether to remain in the current role. In an interview with LocalGov magazine, Paul Bagust, director of UK commercial property at RICS, also warned that short term cost cutting in the workplace is likely to be counterproductive in the long term.

July 10, 2015

UK property industry ‘lags-behind’ customer service revolution says BCO

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, News, Property

Only 1 in 5 office occupiers rate their property management service as ‘good’ or ‘excellent’, according to new research by the British Council for Offices (BCO). While two thirds of occupiers are happy with the quality of their office and three quarters perceive the quality of office space to have improved over the past 10 years, less than one in three occupiers feel the industry understands their business needs. This clear gap between customer expectation and customer experience has led the BCO to call on the industry to develop a better understanding of what a well-performing building looks like from an occupier perspective. The BCO has developed a new definition of building performance, which sets out to frame a more sophisticated approach for property owners and managers to engage with occupiers, focusing upon value and quality creation, rather than simply cost reduction.

June 30, 2015

Settings, silence, serendipity, wellbeing and other lessons from Neocon

by Paul Goodchild • Comment, Events, Furniture, Workplace design

The trick with visits to exhibitions like Neocon, the huge office design event which has just wrapped up in Chicago, is to stay focussed on the wood as much as the trees. So as well as identifying new products, you can also work out the themes pursued by the exhibitors and organisers which are invariably based on the ideas they are currently discussing with their clients. The show becomes a microcosm of what is happening in the outside world. At this year’s Neocon, some of the most readily identifiable themes included the dissipation of the workplace, the creation of work settings, privacy, ergonomics, wellbeing and serendipity. With the possible exception of the age old problem of ergonomics, these all relate to our changing relationship with work and workplaces, not least how we can work from anywhere and what this means both functionally and aesthetically.

June 29, 2015

Beyond agile working: the six factors of knowledge worker productivity

by Andrew Mawson • Comment, Facilities management, Flexible working, Workplace, Workplace design

Whilst the world has focussed heavily on the asset productivity of offices over the last 30 years, reducing the cost of offices per head, often using agile working as a tool for achieving this, it’s becoming clear that the mobility afforded by the latest technology products can be used to aid Knowledge Worker productivity. Knowledge work plays an increasingly large part in the economic fortunes of developing countries. Indeed the vast majority of people working in AWA’s client organisations are Knowledge Workers. Over the last 30 years we’ve seen a gradual shift from manufacturing to service and now to knowledge based industries. Knowledge Workers are broadly speaking ‘people who think for a living’. Whilst the concept of ‘productivity’ in manufacturing and service industries is well understood it is barely understood at all for knowledge based sectors.