workplace offices
The shape of the office as we know it may continue to change, but that doesn’t mean its vital role at the heart of the organisation will diminish, argues Ann Clarke.
The changing shape of the office B
ack in June a survey from the International Facilities Management Association (IFMA) was reported in the media as indicating that facilities managers were
‘looking for more space’. We must all have seized on this as some of the good news we have been waiting for, but you always have to be careful what you believe in how these things are reported but this was especially true in this case. Firstly because the demand for more space was largely attributable to the health and retail sectors but also because it goes against what many of us understand about the market. It didn’t make sense. Even before the recession, the market
was changing radically (as we shall discuss later). As well as these structural changes, the market followed its usual response to adversity by retreating into itself. Often the first people who feel it are furniture suppliers because what they are offering is a deferrable piece of expenditure, for a short while at least. Secondly because there is always the opportunity to make short-term savings by looking at the two greatest items of expenditure on the books of most businesses; people and places. So, short-term thinking has not only
been evident in the decisions of the financiers who helped us into the recent downturn but also the response of some other businesses to the recession. Tough
40 l Property Management Select l september 2010 l
www.pm-select.co.uk
People like their own space and firms know that it is no good addressing employees as their major asset, only to see them walk out of the door because they don’t want to sit in a different place in the office whenever they are in.
decisions have been taken by many companies, not least those that involve letting staff go, but each week the business media has been full of appeal from commentators and business leaders not to lose sight of the longer term picture. Investment in training and research and development has been the focus of many of these appeals but it is equally apposite for investments in facilities. Right now, of course, the recession has
focussed more attention on the FM profession, as it invariably does. The economics are clear. After staff, buildings are easily the second highest item of expenditure for the majority of organisations. It’s a fact hardwired into the programming of most facilities managers but which may be disregarded to some extent at other times by some organisations. That may well be less true right now as moves to reduce costs have highlighted the importance of facilities management as a driver of efficiencies.
Office space reduction
One of the more obvious ways of doing this is to reduce the size of the organisation’s property requirement. In one regard this is possible by reducing the size of workstations. As I mentioned, this has already been going on for some time, driven not by the recession but by new technology. In the latest edition of its Guide to Specification, the British Council
for Offices (BCO) reported that the average density of the office workplace had increased by around 40% since 1997. The survey prompted the BCO to up its density standard to 8-13 square metres per person from the previous 12-17 square metres. The new average benchmark for the office environment has been set at 10 square metres. Incidentally, the latest edition of the
Facilities Handbook still uses the old benchmark, which makes it outdated as a source of advice on this particular subject. This is a shame because the very same research with the very same results was available three or more years ago, published by Ramidus Consulting, which found that over the previous three years typical office densities in the UK had risen from around 15-16 square metres per person to around 10 or less. Even the government has been keeping up. The subject has been debated in Parliament and the Office of Government Commerce has produced a report with DEGW on the subject and another report from IPD Occupiers has advocated new recommendations for workspace efficiency standards in government buildings, ‘Efficiency Standards for Office Space’. According to the IPD report; ‘Current
indicators show that public sector offices have not seen the scale of floor space efficiencies observed in the private sector. On average government offices are occupied about 25% less efficiently with
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