space-pod
cover story Tired of weekend working?
Kevin Parker, MD of Space-pod, argues the case for giving property professionals the weekend off.
Maybe you’d rather be at the football or walking the dog in the park - now that’s a better question! We’re still constantly amazed at the number of property professionals we meet that, having done a full week’s work, then spend the weekend - or, even worse, are expected to spend the weekend - attending to office churn projects. ‘Out of hours office churn’ is the term that we use for moving, re- fitting or relocating occupied office environments at a time when they’re not being used, typically overnight or at the weekend. With the current trend for saturated office space with smaller workstations, and better space utilisation, following the introduction of flat screens and smarter ways of working, hot desking, hoteling, etc, decant or ‘swing space’ is a thing of the past which, in turn makes your typical churn project a more involved process - often requiring a safe set of hands to deliver it properly and ensure everything is in place to be operational first thing Monday when the staff return. Factor in the requirement to relocate IT, add power and data and patch the cabinet and it’s easy to see why some property professionals want to stay close. Add any form of construction to the mix and now
S
o where would you rather be at the weekend? With your friends and family or at your workstation? Actually, that’s probably not the best question to ask.
you’re starting to see risk to the business. Organising this sort of project is difficult and usually extremely frustrating, even for the most experienced property professional, relying on a variety of sub contractors to work either alongside each other or sequentially to deliver a project in a condensed timescale with little scope for error or delay. There is another way to achieve this, using dedicated specialist contractors used to working under pressure to deliver rapid churn in occupied offices -‘out of hours’. This successful out of hours churn depends on a perfect combination of planning, manpower and resources. Specialist contractors, like Space-pod, can play an important part in being an outsourced part of the property management team, working to deliver rapid change in your occupied space.
Typically the process starts long before the period of carrying out the works, be it overnight, midweek or at the weekend. Behind the scenes during and lead-up to the refit or move, your contractor will work with the facility manager or project team to plan every last detail of the work to be carried out. This would normally range from IT disconnect/reconnect to furniture disposal/installation or re- configuration of existing, supplying of move crates, drawings, labels and spreadsheets. If construction is required or a rolling refit, then internal products such as carpeting, partitioning and infrastructure services are added to the mix, all the time building a cross section of requirement that represents the physical delivery required. Once this has been identified and site and access parameters considered it is possible to start
50 l Property Management Select l july/august 2010
lwww.pm-select.co.uk
July/August 2010 Digital Editon
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