Proper Programming is Key!

Through proper programming (information gathering), surveys and observation, you can determine how people spend their time in terms of heads-down work, collaborative work, type and size of collaborative team interactions and intra-departmental interaction.  Frequently, current facilities are not designed to support the needs of the knowledge worker in terms of providing the proper mix and quantities of work settings required for every type of job function as well as formal and informal meeting spaces. People are generally adaptable creatures that learn to use less than optimal work environments, not realizing that there are better ways to work to optimize their effectiveness and productivity. Gaining an understanding of any productivity metrics for measuring worker performance and output is also a key ingredient of understanding what must go into the workplace design to support those productivity goals.

Heads-Down Workspace

Heads-down workspace can be accommodated in a closed office or open work environment depending on what level of visual and acoustical privacy is required. Everyone has a different tolerance level for distraction.  Sound masking can be helpful in blocking out intelligible, adjacent conversations; sliding door panels in workstations can send the message of “heads-down time” in an open work environment. Closed glass doors in closed offices can also send that “do not disturb message” during times of heads-down work. If money is no object, electrically-charged glass products, can turn clear glass to opaque glass by the touch of a button to add visual privacy to the glass-fronted closed office.

Collaborative Work Environment Options

Collaborative work environments should consist of a mix of formal and informal collaboration areas. Intra-departmental informal collaborative areas can be strategically placed between departments at a major corridor intersection. This can be a semi-open, inviting coffee bar with counters and bar stools which is an updated version of the corporate water cooler. Strategically-placed, small, informal seating areas with comfortable seating and a shared work surface with computer connectivity and power can act as an interactive collaboration area. Combined with an adjacent, multi-screen display for computer-driven brainstorming appeals to the left brained, analytical minds while an adjacent whiteboard wall with print-out or PDF saving capabilities can be used for right-brained mind-mapping drawing exercises. Access to natural day light and exterior window views makes teaming areas more inviting.  The ability to look out the window is beneficial in allowing the mind to process complex information.

Temporary, open teaming area workstation clusters, sometimes designed as linear, face to face benching or pinwheel configurations, can be effective work areas allowing for easy collaboration and interaction for periods of time when team members are closely coordinating and piggy-backing ideas with their areas of expertise.

The proper quantities and mix of formal conference rooms that are properly sized for the typical size of meetings are essential to optimizing the collaborative work environment.  They must include the right combination of audio-video equipment, white boards and lighting and lighting controls.

If you would like a complementary check list and example of a questionnaire for determining the needs of the collaborative worker, please e-mail me at rfanelli@fanellimcclain.com.

Rich Fanelli, AIA, CFM, IFMA Fellow

Principal/Fanelli McClain

Phone: 703-563-0380 ext. 121

Below are good examples of collaborative work environments.

American Institutes for Research staff pantry/lounge area.
Design by Fanelli McClain

Teknion CLUBtalk

L3 Communications, seating area adjacent to pantry area.
Design by Fanelli McClain

Kimball Furniture Hum line

Simplified Space Standards & Modularity:

In my 35 years of experience practicing in the commercial office design field, I have seen the benefits of simplifying your space and furniture standards. A best practice scenario is to have no more than two to three office sizes that are modular in nature. As an example, two 15’ by 15’ adjacent, closed offices can easily be turned into three 10’ by 15’ closed offices with a minimal amount of demolition and new construction. A cluster of six 8’ by 8’ systems furniture workstations can easily be turned into eight 6’ by 6’ workstations that matches the same footprint without too many additional panels and components while providing expansion space for two additional people.

Use of Vertical Space:

We can reduce the sizes of most offices without sacrificing work surface or storage space if we made better use of vertical space.  So much of our office storage is floor mounted. If we raised some of that storage off of the floor and put it above the work surfaces, we could reduce the size of our closed offices by 33%, in most cases. Having a continuous, wrap-around work surface also helps maximize the functionality of the work surface since you eliminate breaks in work surfaces that typically occur when using free-standing case goods furniture. If you are considering a demountable partition system, you can hang both the work surfaces and the overhead storage off of the demountable wall panels from the  slotted strips that occur between the wall panels.

Reduced Office Sizes:

An example of the 33% reduction of office sizes that was previously mentioned, can be accomplished by taking a typical 10’ by 15’ office standard and reducing it down to 10’ by 10’. A sliding “barn door” can also be used to eliminate the 9 square feet of space for a door swing.  The continuous wrap-around work surface and the overhead storage can replicate the same amount of work surface space and storage typically found in a 10’ by 15’ closed office with free-standing case goods furniture. By adding glass along the front of the office, through either glass in the sliding door, and/or a glass clerestory band along the top of the wall facing the corridor, a sense of additional depth can be achieved.

Reduction of Systems Furniture Space Standards:

Over the past 15 years, the foot prints of systems furniture standards have been getting smaller, sometimes at the expense of the functionality of the workstations. With the advent of flat screen monitors, which take up less depth of work surface, dual monitors which allow you to reference other digital information without having to print it out and digital media/documents, which allow most documents to reside on the server rather than in a file cabinet, we can now function with less work surface and less storage in our workstations.  Many companies who used to have an 8’ by 8’ workstation standard have migrated to 6’ by 7’, which allows for a wrap-around work surface and a wardrobe/storage unit or a 6’ by 6’ footprint which allows for an L-shaped work surface configuration. This can account for as much as a 44% space savings.

The Telework Option:

According to IFMA’s Distributed Work Research Report published in 2009, 47% of surveyed companies have either already established a telework program or are seriously considering one as a way to achieve work-life balance, especially for younger workers with children, manage change, churn and growth, or as a way to reduce their real estate footprint. Some of the ideal candidates for starting a telework program include contractors, accounting, IT and sales.

It is not uncommon for a company to set as an initial goal to have 20% of their workforce as potential teleworkers.  When the goal is related to real estate footprint reduction, those 20% normally come into the office 2 to 3 days a week and will share an office with a co-worker or use a small touch-down workstation.  Take for example a 400 person office where the square feet per person is 240 square feet per person (96,000 SF).  If 20% (80) of the people teleworked, with 70% in closed office and 30% in open workstations, if half of the closed offices and open office workstations for those eighty people were eliminated, it could potentially result in a square footage savings of 6,000 square feet.

Some of this square footage savings has sometimes been reduced by adding a variety of small, informal team meeting rooms or areas for teleworkers and their team members to meet when they are in the office. This additional space can sometimes be reduced by eliminating large, under-utilized conference rooms.

Bank of America realized a $5,500 per program participant per year savings along with a 14% job satisfaction increase after their first year into their “My Work” telework program. Nortel was able to decrease their overall square feet space utilization from 340 square feet per person down to 200 square feet per person through their Integrated Work Environment telework program.

The Threat to Corporate Culture:

Corporate culture can suffer when implementing a telework program.  It is necessary to create several different types of programs that can bring staff together on a regular basis so that they still feel connected to the organization and its desired culture. Bank of America launched their “Yeti” on-line community forum where Bank of America teleworkers can create common-interest groups, post blogs, share information as well as encourage innovation through idea sharing and feedback. Haworth’s corporate HQ in Michigan encourages a sense of community through communal lunches once a week where staff brings in a pot-luck lunch which they all share.  These ideas as well as periodic, all-hands meetings are just a few ways that companies are nurturing corporate culture while working in a distributed work environment.

To find out how your company can benefit from these and other ideas, please contact Richard Fanelli to set up a complementary meeting at rfanelli@fanellimcclain.com or call me at 703-563-0380 ext. 121.

By Richard Fanelli, AIA, CFM, IFMA Fellow

Over the next couple of months, I will be posting a series of articles on Change Management.  It is a hot topic in the facilities management and corporate C-Suite arena, but what does it really mean?  I recently attended a two day symposium on Change Management, sponsored by the IFMA Foundation, at Cornell University in New York. It was attended by facility managers, thought leaders and academics in Facilities Management from around the world. Many different issues were discussed from many different viewpoints.  I walked away from this symposium thinking that there is no one definition for Change Management. Change Management can mean different things to different organizations based on what their challenges are.  One common theme, however, did emerge and that theme can be summed up in one word; “flexibility”.  An agile organization can readily adopt different change management initiatives more readily than a rigid organization.  It is similar to an old stiff oak tree in a storm vs a willow tree. The willow tree will most likely survive the high winds of a storm much better than the oak tree due to its flexibility.

Why is Change Management Important?
 

In this period of economic uncertainty and change, an agile organization will survive, and even thrive, due to its ability to adapt to the economic realities of its industry.  Competition is fierce, the bottom line is being driven lower in order to realize any profits, while at the same time, new, creative thinking and out of the box innovation is key to being several steps ahead of the competition in the introduction of new products and services. Since facilities costs are one of the largest overhead line items on any corporation’s books, it is critical to look at how your organization’s real estate can support and even lead change
management initiatives in order to keep your organization competitive.

We will be exploring various real estate-related solutions, strategies and best practices on options that can be implemented in the quest for implementing Change Management solutions. Some of the topics that I will include in this series are:

• Reducing your real estate footprint without sacrificing corporate culture
• Creating workplaces that foster collaboration and innovation
• Branding and creating a “Sense of Place”
• Workplaces that attract and retain the best talent
• Maximizing flexibility in workspace standards and speed of new workplace delivery
• Creating workplaces that support productivity
• New technologies that support Change Management initiatives
• The importance of linking branding and culture
• Forecasting where workplace trends will bring us in twenty years

Richard Fanelli, AIA, CFM, IFMA Fellow has taught thousands of facilities managers with IFMA (International Facilities Management Association) and at George Mason University in their Facilities Management Certificate program since 1993.  He is the author of the book “Best Project Management Practices” and is an instructor for the “Current Trends and Future Issues for Facilities Managers” course at GMU.

One design trend is the lowering of workstation panels and the addition of more glass to workstation panels and office walls.  This trend increases access to natural daylight, which is a “green” design feature, and creates a more open work environment. This trend also adds to visual distraction and the sense of increased accessibility to coworkers. Every time you are visually distracted from completing a “head-down” task, your brain has to reboot and start all over again to concentrate on the task at hand.

What I have found, while designing office space over the past 35 years, is that there are a number of things that you can do to provide some flexibility in the workplace to meet the general acoustical and visual privacy needs for most individuals so that they can remain productive while performing those heads-down tasks and communicating over the phone.  Here are some things to consider:

• Provide a variety of work environments with varying levels of acoustical and visual privacy that are unassigned, shared spaces.  This especially works well in a space that has a wireless computer network so that you can bring your laptop with you. Years ago, Steelcase offered a 6’ by 8’ high-wall work pod called the Personal Harbor.  You can create the same environment by creating small, closed offices with doors that have a work counter and sound-absorbing, acoustical wall surfaces that can be used for heads down work or sensitive phone calls.  Sometimes these small rooms have frosted glass hinged or sliding doors so you can see if the room is occupied without having too clear a view that might create distraction.
• If you have the funds to do so, you could consider electrically charged glass, such as SwitchLite.  With the press of a button the glass goes from clear to translucent, giving the users of the room a higher level of privacy.  This material is pretty expensive, averaging $200 per square foot installed.
• Consider a sound masking system.  Digital sound masking systems are usually located above the ceiling and create a hushing sound that masks the frequency level of the human voice. It makes nearby conversations unintelligible so that you can’t hear the specific words that are being spoken and turns those nearby conversations into general background noise. They are so sophisticated that they can be adjusted to mask predominantly male or female voices.  They can be remotely controlled by a facilities manager.  One best practice is to put them in both the open and closed areas so that you don’t notice the difference as you move from open to closed office space.

If you have any acoustic or visual privacy issues in your workplace, I would be happy to provide you with some complementary suggestions to solve your problems.  Feel free to contact me at rfanelli@fanellimcclain.com.

By Richard Fanelli, AIA, CFM, IFMA Fellow
President/Fanelli McClain

Some examples of reflecting the culture and the mission in workplace design would include the overall layout of the space, the finishes to be used and the style of the design (ie traditional vs. transitional vs. contemporary).

• An organization that is committed to open communication between management and staff would most likely have fewer closed office, more glass in closed offices and lower panel heights around systems furniture stations. There are many examples of presidents who have a workstation out in the middle of the open office area.
• A technology company would most likely have lighter finishes than that of a traditional law firm.
• A technology company would most likely be more contemporary in style than that of a law firm.

Colors in logos can be highly influential in determining the finish palette for interior finishes for floors, general wall finishes and accent walls. We recently created a branded finish standard for a company that has locations all over the world initially based on colors found in their new logo.  These finishes are used in all of their new facilities so that there is branded continuity in the overall appearance of all of their facilities.

Of course, it is also the special design elements in the upgraded, more public-facing areas that make the most difference in the design of a space. It may be upgraded wall or floor finishes, special ceiling treatments, custom millwork, upgraded lighting effects, artwork, graphics or plants that add that special finishing touch to any space. The most important thought that I want to leave you with is that the designer must put their ego aside when developing the “branded image” for their client, so that their design can reflect the corporate culture and desired image while also responding to the realities of budget and schedule.

By Richard Fanelli, AIA, CFM, IFMA Fellow

One of the dilemmas that we always have to address when gathering end-user space needs information, also known as programming, is to determine how democratic the process should be and to what level of detail do we have to drill down to. The approach that I have used to gather this programming information is by collecting important data about a client’s working environment. If done correctly, this “people-focused design” process of identifying the proper programming information from the end-users results in the optimization of productivity, team and management communication, and promoting overall work-life satisfaction. This can be achieved by asking the right people the right questions. Some organizations want to open up their programming process to each end-user. Other organizations tend to want to limit the programming information gathering process to a high level of management and not get the rank and file involved. While both approaches have their pros and cons, what is important is knowing the right approach to use to achieve the desired results.

Approach #1: The Comprehensive Survey
For an organization that is looking to get all parties involved in the programing process, The Comprehensive Survey approach is the way to go. When a company is looking to implement new space or furniture standards or is planning for a major renovation or a move, it is important to get as much information from the employees on what they would like to see out of their working environment. With the use of a Comprehensive Survey, these issues can be addressed. A quick e-mailed survey can do the trick. Some questions that need to be discussed within this survey include work surface needs, storage requirements, acoustical privacy needs, as well as if there is a need for gathering spaces for collaboration. Once the results have been tallied and analyzed from this e-mailed survey, this will help you identify the unique work habits and needs of your workers. You can then sort this information and create suitable working conditions for all of the various departments and roles within your organization and achieve a collective and functioning workspace.

Approach #2: The High Level View
Sometimes, the programming process of addressing the needs and wants of the end-users is left solely to upper management. I have termed this as the High Level View. With this approach, it is necessary for those in charge to have a good understanding of their employees’ workspace needs and requirements. With the High Level View Approach, there are two important processes that must occur. The first step starts with a “visioning” session where upper management is asked to envision the successful completion of the project and what they see as the desired end results. Through this process, project goals and objectives are clearly defined while also factoring in budget and time constraints. It is imperative that a strategic business and marketing plan is drawn up at this point to make sure that the future growth and direction of the organization is taken into consideration. In addition, other components that should be addressed at this level of programming include how the space should reflect the desired corporate culture and desired branded image of the organization as well as a look into the critical adjacencies between the various departments sharing this space.

Once all of the above questions have been addressed, the second level of programming can now take place. Key representatives of the various departments, or work groups, are then interviewed after having reviewed a pre-programming questionnaire to allow them to prepare for the interviews. Normally with this High Level approach, established space standards are used. Specific issues are addressed which include personnel counts, department-specific support area requirements, critical adjacencies, work flow, paper flow, mechanical, electrical and plumbing considerations and level of satisfaction with design aspects of their existing space.

Shared support area must also be addressed. Sometimes this is undertaken by a separate group of management representatives for larger projects. Support areas that are new and have not been built yet may require much more thought and pre-design and may have to go into the definition of what those spaces will need in order to properly define their space needs.

All of these requirements are then recorded into a Comprehensive Space Needs Analysis Report (sometimes called a Programming Report), which documents the High Level project vision, goals and objectives, as well as the space needs of each department or work group. After the review and approval process of this document, it is used as a helpful tool to design the space and to prepare specifications and documents for the project build-out.

By Richard Fanelli, AIA, CFM, IFMA Fellow
President/Fanelli McClain

For more information on the programming process, please feel free to reach me at rfanelli@fanellimcclain.com or call me at 703-563-0380 ext. 121.

• Fanelli McClain Design Studios and Williams Notaro & Associates relocated to 3928 Pender Drive in Fairfax, VA.
• The warm browns, red and wheat accent walls gave texture to the space and provided a welcoming impression. The exposed ceiling trusses and customized workstations highlighted the space. Special attention was given to customize each station by fitting them with panels of corrugated metal and plexi.
• The lighting, from Litecontrol, had a “radiant edge style” which give luster to the room.
• Bookcases with a laminate-covered top running down the central aisle provided ample surface to study plans and finishes.
• DuctSox, a soft form of ductwork, added an interesting design element as well as improved airflow and an economic advantage over  a traditional hard ductwork installation.
• The new space reflected  the personality of the staff: imaginative and user-friendly.

• ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­British Broadcast Corporation’s Washington, DC News bureau is a 13,000 SF full-service, A&E design project located in the city’s central business district.
• The focal point of this project is the Television Studio, which was designed to be the center of the plan. The suite also features of radio cubicles with adjacent radio studios, multiple edit suites and a large newsroom.
• Flexibility was built into the Newsroom design to accommodate an overflow of additional staff, when key events occur. Gantries hang from the ceiling to provide televisions for all staff and visitors.
• To save demolition costs and provide a unique gathering place, the pantry was elevated over existing steel beams that were originally used to support a battery backup system. The walls surrounding the pantry were lowered to create a view into the newsroom. Networked café tables are in the center of the pantry giving staff an alternate place to work.