Office Planning Considerations
The most difficult task faced by an organization addressing its office space situation is usually that of determining space requirements. In the jargon of architects and space planners this is known as space programming. The function often embraces issues relating to the organization's structure and staffing, the nature of job responsibilities, the work spaces for the people holding those jobs, the work flows and physical adjacency requirements, and the areas needed to support the people as they perform their responsibilities. Because the organization's internal plans and strategies, as well as the external environment in which it operates, can have a significant effect on these issues, the space programming task can be involved. This article attempts to make the space programming process more effective by providing an overview of some key concepts that should be considered, as well as an explanation of some terminology that may be encountered.
Some early planning considerations
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How can your space be made to reflect your business strategy, philosophies and values? How could it help your people work more effectively? Can it yield savings? The application of your space can create a competitive advantage — or disadvantage.
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2.
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How do you want your people to work, communicate and interact? How do you want to use technology? Will your space embrace adequate and appropriate utilities and hardware?
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3.
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Is your work culture shifting? Is your organization experiencing the movement of people out of departments and into teams? Are your people getting more autonomy? If working in teams is important, are team spaces easy to find and use? Are private offices empty much of the time? Should space be assigned on activity, status, or some combination of both?
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4.
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Are your employees satisfied? Human energies, experiences and emotions fuel performance. Can your workplace keep pace with your workforce? Is your population becoming more diverse? Are your people in constant motion? Do they struggle to balance work and personal time? Are you creating a new work culture? What message does your workplace send about the value you place on people? Does it contribute to personal comfort and health? Does it exhilarate? Does it satisfy and delight the people it serves?
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Many of the issues arising from these considerations stem from the notion of change within the organization.
Addressing change
Most organizations find that the size and layout of their offices, often painstakingly worked out not so very long ago, are no longer ideal. The reason is, of course, that change has occurred since the size and layout were determined. In some cases the degree of change has been such that the office has become functionally obsolete. Unfortunately, alterations to fix the problem are often difficult and expensive. No formula exists that will preclude the impact of change on the organization's office space situation. However, the effects of that change can be mitigated by following a three-step approach: (1) forecasting change, (2) planning for change, and (3) building for change. Each of these steps is discussed below.
Forecasting change
The simplest and traditional method of forecasting future space requirements is to add a growth factor to a projected total baseline area. This method usually fails to produce an effective forecast for two reasons: (a) it assumes a uniform growth throughout the organization, which never happens, and (b) it ignores the configuration associated with the growth — whether more private offices will be needed, more open area, etc.
A better method is to combine historical data with forecasted growth by functional area within the organization. Questions such as the following should be addressed.
What has been the growth pattern for each functional area during the past five years, expressed in terms of people, area, and configuration?
How do changes in each functional area affect the size and configuration of other functional areas?
At what staff levels will growth occur and how will technology, systems, and organization affect growth?
How will new markets and/or acquisitions affect the growth in office space requirements?
Once answers, although inexact, are developed, space requirements by functional area can be computed. Snapshots taken at various points in time, such as three and five years after the baseline, will define future space needs. (Keep in mind that the baseline should be that point at which the new space will be ready for occupancy — often a point one to three years out from the time the initial forecasting is undertaken.)
Planning for change
Once the space requirements have been established, the next step is to develop a plan to anticipate change — the goal should be to reduce the need to tear down walls and reconstruct when change occurs. Such a plan will usually incorporate some or all of the following elements.
Standardized work station sizes. While standardization may seem obvious, it is quite often compromised as a result of staff pressures for customization. If deviations from the standard are necessary, the customization can often be satisfied by using different components within the same footprint.
Flexible spaces. Rather than creating a series of rooms tailored to a specific need, design spaces that can serve multiple purposes. For example, consider large conference rooms that are divisible into two or three smaller rooms when not in use. Project work rooms should be sized so that they can easily be converted into offices. Also, files located in corridors will take less space than those same files located in file rooms, since the area required for circulation is used more efficiently.
Pre planned expansion. Expansion space required during the first few years after the baseline point in time should be incorporated into the basic space to be leased as of the baseline date. In addition, computer rooms, lunch rooms, equipment rooms, libraries, etc. should not be located at the “ends” of the space, for they are costly to relocate and will limit the ability to expand or contract.
Planned future adjacencies. Most organizations consider departmental adjacencies in the original layout, but often do not anticipate effects once a few changes have occurred. One way to minimize effects that might otherwise be very harmful to traffic patterns and work flows is to locate a smaller, unrelated department among two or three highly interactive departments. At a later time the unrelated department can relocate to provide expansion for the other groups without affecting important adjacencies.
Oversized support areas. While it is relatively easy and inexpensive to expand office and staff space, support areas are often significantly more difficult to modify. This is especially true for areas that require plumbing, raised or extra strength floors, special HVAC or electrical, or audiovisual equipment. Consequently, it may be very cost effective to oversize such areas initially to accommodate growth that can be reasonably foreseen.
Demountable partitions. Organizations which can be expected to change their floor plans frequently should consider the use of movable floor to ceiling partitions. Although these partitions typically cost two to three times as much as standard walls, their use can become cost effective if several configuration changes are contemplated during the period under consideration. Rarely, however, is the use of these demountable partitions justified throughout an entire office area.
Furniture systems. Where the complete privacy afforded by floor to ceiling walls or demountable partitions is not required, but some degree of privacy for individual stations is necessary, the use of freestanding panels and furniture systems should be evaluated. Although these systems are typically more expensive than conventional drywall construction and furniture, their use is sometimes justified when one or two reconfigurations can be expected. While all manufacturers represent their systems as being flexible, substantial differences exist in this regard. Maximum flexibility is generally incorporated into those systems which allow individual work stations to be modified without affecting neighboring stations.
Building for change
In addition to forecasting change and planning for it, certain steps must be taken in constructing the office space to accommodate change efficiently.
Ceiling penetrations. Most offices are constructed by beginning with the ceiling plan and then building walls up from the floor to the underside of the ceiling. Drywall partitions that penetrate the ceiling are acoustically superior to standard walls and, furthermore, may be required to isolate rooms with special air conditioning requirements. However, these “slab-to-slab” partitions should be used sparingly, as they complicate reconfiguration.
Prewired networks. Often the changes required in offices involve equipment rather than people. Few offices today are without computers, and many have already networked their systems. The future will certainly embrace networking to a much higher degree in numerous organizations. Adding or enlarging networks, or adding terminals or computers, requires modifications to conduit and/or cabling. Depending upon local codes and the permeability of the basic construction, these changes can be quite expensive and disruptive. To avoid these problems serious consideration should be given to prewiring the entire premises. When this is done, cabling and outlet plates are placed at all locations where additional work stations might be located. Additionally, placing two computer outlets and the requisite telephone and electrical receptacles in those offices that could be occupied by two people can be an inexpensive way to provide for peak staffing situations that might emerge in the future.
Work place terms
Some of the concepts influencing and, in some cases, redefining office space design are defined below. These concepts have added some graphic and thought provoking terms to the vocabulary of space planners.
Rightsizing. Often confused with downsizing, which usually refers to an organization's actions and programs to reduce the number of employees and the size of its budgets, rightsizing is a strategy that aims to maximize value from owned or leased commercial real estate. It addresses the issues of what is the right amount of space for each function, how can space be used more effectively, and how might functions that traditionally have required large amounts of space be modified such that their requirements can be reduced. As examples, infrequent meetings that require large rooms can be conducted outside of the organization's offices, as in a hotel, and voluminous files can be purged to minimize their space requirements. Rightsizing is a comprehensive approach that also embraces the concepts associated with the following terms.
Flexspace. This term refers to a variety of work places, including multiple work settings within the corporate office facilities, remote satellite locations, and at-home spaces. The underlying notion is to recognize and effectively support employees who perform work at these multiple locations. The design of the flexspace is often not traditional. It might be a small, enclosed workroom shared by many people at different times, a quiet lounge area with a caddie for storage and a portable computer, a suite of offices in a suburban shopping center, or an office area within the employee's home. The flexspace may be used by a variety of employees performing tasks ranging from data entry to project management. In the flexspace context, no employees work full-time at-home. Rather, the amount of at-home work is individually negotiated, employees stay networked and integrated into the operations, and all management prerogatives are maintained.
Shared Space/Just-In-Time Office. This expression refers to space that is shared by two or three employees, but at different times. Typically it applies to field sales people, data entry people, or telemarketing people working on different shifts, but it can also apply to employees who share the same job and to part-timers. The goal of this concept is to provide more effective space to each person while, at the same time, requiring less total facility to support those people. Ideally the space is used productively around the clock. In order to accommodate different people the spaces are designed with immediate adjustability for such things as desk and seat heights. Additionally, the spaces often encompass choice of location, such as a conference room/office or a lounge area/mobile office. Shared space can be used for employees who work on the same shift but spend time out of the office — sales people, field engineers, auditors, consultants, etc. In this situation the number of work stations necessary to support the employee group must be determined through studying the patterns of people who are in the office at the same times. Furthermore, it may be desirable to take steps to modify those patterns where such modifications do not interfere with the performance of individual employees.
Hoteling. A concept very similar to shared space, but usually implying that the individual employee call ahead to make a reservation for a work space on a specific date and for a specific period. As in a hotel, a system must be in place to keep track of both reserved and available spaces.
Non-territorial office. This is a concept wherein a group of employees share a single work area without defined personal work spaces. All employees share files, library or resource areas, lab space, large work tables, and quiet spaces. The goal is to encourage group and team interaction (“the fortuitous encounter”) and, as a result of this increased interaction, to shorten development cycles and improve productivity and quality. Non-territorial office space is often used for development engineers, temporary task forces, multidisciplinary teams, etc.
Free address. A term primarily used in Japan, free address space has the same goal, depending upon the type of employee being facilitated, as the shared space/just-in-time office, and the non-territorial office.
Home base/cave and commons. Under this approach, each employee has a small, dedicated office and shares, with other members of the work team, a variety of open, group spaces, such as large work tables, lounge areas, terminals, media space, etc. This concept is similar to the non-territorial office, with the exception that individuals have a private space of their own.
Telecommuting. Telecommuting is a term applied to employees working at home, in the field, at a client site, or at a remote corporate facility, as well as in the headquarters offices. This space planning format aims to provide people the flexibility of working at home or at a remote office, while also having some base of operation at the corporate facility, even though the work space there may be small or shared. The objective is to provide a work place that is most convenient both to the employee and the employee's work. The company may supply equipment and furnishings for the home or remote office setting. Telecommuting is applicable to a variety of jobs, with writers, engineers, and programmers being the most common.
Media space. Designed around the theory that “you don't have to be there to be there,” media space incorporates both audio and video recording and receiving capabilities. Overcoming the constraints of both time and distance, media space also aids “the fortuitous encounter.” Primarily used by development engineers and designers to maintain contact with remote design and engineering collaborators and production facilities, this concept will ultimately expand to other workers. A subset of this approach, sometimes eliminating the recording and/or video capabilities, is known as teleconferencing.
Virtual office. A concept wherein the employee functions within an “office” that follows him or her wherever the employee goes, often including an office capability within the employee's car. The virtual office embraces the use of any or all of the following portable equipment: personal computer with data communication and faxing capabilities, printer, scanner and, of course, telephone. The concept also usually requires that the employee can connect with the organization's computer system via some type of dial-up network in order to send and receive the information necessary for the employee to function.
Effects of location and time
The notions of location and time — the where and when of employees’ working hours — are implicit in all of the foregoing concepts. The effect of those notions on office design can be summarized as shown in the following chart.
Location
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Same
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Same
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Different
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Different
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Time
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Same
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Different
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Same
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Different
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Resulting effect
on design
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Traditional office environment
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Shared space or
hoteling
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Teleconferencing or media space
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Virtual
office
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(As an example of using the chart, if employees work at the same location but at different times, serious consideration should be given to shared space or hoteling concepts in the office space design.)
Conclusion
Space is effective when it supports all work processes and activities in your business; when it addresses the needs of people collaborating in teams and groups; when it helps individuals meet the challenge of multiple tasks and increased autonomy; and when you see measurable improvements in interaction, information flow and flexibility.
Space works when your people are healthy and safe; when users can configure their space to be what they need; and when you see measurable growth in employee satisfaction and reduction in absenteeism.
Space saves when you can do more with less real estate; when you can reduce the number of square feet without reducing comfort or performance; when your workplace can accommodate changes; and when you see measurable improvements in occupancy costs and worker downtime caused by facility changes.
To make your space effective, to make it work and to make it save is no easy task, and too often the office planning function is left until the latter stages of an office space project. This happens for one or more reasons.
1. Since the issues frequently go to the heart of the future structure, operation, and staffing
of the organization, the questions raised are often difficult to answer.
2. The function can be time consuming, characterized by an inherent conflict between
demand for space by staff and pressure by top management to hold down the costs
represented by leasing or owning space.
3. Because the function forces decisions about situations that will occur in the future, the
notion exists that the decisions will be easier to make if put off until the future is closer.
4. Sometimes real estate people, in their zeal to get a deal done, may suggest that a deal
can be structured with enough flexibility to allow the planning to be done later rather than
sooner.
However, these reasons are seldom valid. The questions that are difficult to answer rarely get easier with the passage of time; if anything, they get harder. Likewise, the conflict between the need for space and the need to keep expenses low never goes away. Procrastination never makes the decisions regarding space any easier, and flexibility based upon incomplete or inadequate planning comes at a price, if it can be achieved at all.
Thus office planning should be addressed at the very beginning of any activity leading to a long term commitment for space. Whether that commitment takes the form of constructing one's own building, leasing space different from that currently occupied, or renewing or extending the lease on currently occupied space, office planning should be based upon answers to the tough questions discussed herein. Ideally office planning should dovetail with the organization's strategic plan. If a strategic plan has not been put in place, or has not been updated for some time, strong consideration should be given to strategic planning as a prerequisite to office planning.
Once the office planning function can logically dovetail with the strategic plan, the function can proceed effectively. The activity will usually involve the evaluation of alternative approaches. Those approaches will frequently address office design and furniture options vis-à-vis savings in the amount of space required and greater flexibility in accommodating change. Consequently, office planning should be performed with the close involvement and participation of a professional architect/space planner, along with your real estate professional. Putting the right people with the right skills to work at the right time will allow your space to work well throughout its life.
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