The introduction of space planning strategies such as open plan workspace, modular cubicles, reduction of enclosed offices and hotelling were designed to save costs, both on the space and the inevitable churn. In an effort to sell these concepts to the corporations and their workers, they came with the promise of improved productivity. This productivity…
This graphic does a great job of simplifying the total cost of corporate office space (plus a few other costs) in a way that a written explanation simply can’t – with visualization. If you’ve never heard of an Infographic, this is one of them. It’s a very tall image so we’ve split it and provided…
I recently had a chance to talk about space planning with David Spence from OfficeSpace at The Facilities Management Show in the UK where I was an invited speaker. His experience confirmed my own observations – I see that for many companies, space planning in Facility Management hasn’t progressed much beyond the manual process I…
Yes, there is a link, and because of gridlock, the time is right for more alternate work arrangements at the office. Not to mention the high cost of real estate. There you go, two drivers (pun intended), one for the employee, one for the employer. 20 years ago, the Corporate Real Estate department I worked…
Facility Managers often give themselves and their departments the worst space in their facility. It’s sort of like the shoe maker’s children not having shoes. We give good, productive space to other departments, including other support groups like HR, IT, finance and others. Yet we often neglect the needs of our own staff. In one…
I recently did a benchmarking study for a client who was trying to rationalize their office space allocation standards while planning for a major relocation. The relocation would result In a lot of change for many employees currently in a mix of old furniture and no real standards in older leased space. The study was…
Some time ago, I encountered a great case study about a proxy for office productivity. A colleague had an interesting example that points to the link between the office layout, furniture, finishes and productivity. No he doesn’t have a magic formula to measuring productivity – this example uses ‘employee satisfaction’ as a proxy.