subject: Office Design Planning Deep Dive [print this page] In our experience spanning over 15 years, we have noticed that successful office relocations or refurbishments are often treated as carefully planned projects by our clients.
A good office design is much more than final finishing and aesthetics. A workspace must be functional and facilitate productivity and efficiency both of which start to be conceived during the initiation phase.
The Project Manager will plan for and incorporate a set of guidelines that will drive activities undertaken during the planning phase to ensure the new design meets expectations and needs of every role within the organization, and should include:
A framework for undertaking business analysis that is focused on ensuring operational processes and needs across the organization can be captured and understood;
Business requirement guidelines clearly focused on forecasting business growth and stating technological requirements. Further a framework is needed to capture the requirements of inter related organizational processes and needs.
Stakeholder Analysis guidelines that will ensure maximum levels of feedback, participation and engagement are received from departmental managers
Agreeing these guidelines, simplifying them and communicating them to all concerned is critical to managing future risks and uncertainties while ensuring delivery during the Commissioning phase meets shareholder expectations.
The design and planning phase of an office relocation / refurbishment project is founded on the guidelines agreed and defined during the initiation phase.
This stage of any project aims to capture current and evolving requirements and needs of organizations (such as):
Staff numbers
Expansion plans
Interdepartmental links
Storage requirements
Meeting room requirements
Reception functionality
These types of inputs are required for any design brief and are also utilized to understand:
Space Requirements (which can identify opportunities to streamline operations and better identify whether an organization should refurbish or relocate);
Workspace Planning (which will optimize operational productivity, ensuring the right work environment is defined per function, while ensuring inter departmental processes is logical and efficient)
