Shaping the future workplace

Steve McGre­gor, man­ag­ing direc­tor of the DMA Group, which pro­vides the spe­cial­ist ser­vices need­ed to keep build­ings run­ning.

Tomáš Jur­dák, part­ner and head of real estate at Mid­dle­Cap, a pri­vate invest­ment hold­ing com­pa­ny.

Nathan Doughty, CEO of Asite, a cloud col­lab­o­ra­tion sys­tem for archi­tects, engi­neers and builders

Dr Nico­la Mil­lard, prin­ci­pal inno­va­tion part­ner at BT and a researcher spe­cial­is­ing in the future of work

Paul Pavia, head of devel­op­ment at MEPC, a prop­er­ty invest­ment and devel­op­ment busi­ness

Are busi­ness­es reimag­in­ing the office in light of the pan­dem­ic?  

SM: The evi­dence is now incon­tro­vert­ible: both the pur­pose and the val­ue of the work­place are chang­ing and will con­tin­ue to change.

TJ: Orig­i­nal­ly, the office was all about the phys­i­cal envi­ron­ment. But I think we’re now look­ing more to the emo­tion­al qual­i­ty of the space. This is some­thing that we as a devel­op­er are try­ing to cap­ture.

ND: For us, a big fac­tor in recruit­ment his­tor­i­cal­ly was how far away some­one was from Lon­don. But we’ve realised that when every­one works at home or they need to come in only once or twice a week, it doesn’t mat­ter where they are.

NM: We’ve seen a huge accel­er­a­tion in the dig­i­tal side of things. We’re in a sit­u­a­tion where we’re try­ing to learn and rein­vent work so that it works for both employ­ers and employ­ees.

PP: Com­mu­ni­cat­ing in 2D with col­leagues is quite an iso­lat­ing and soul­less expe­ri­ence. The longer that home­work­ing has gone on, the more peo­ple have become des­per­ate to return to the office.

What chal­lenges might com­pa­nies face when adapt­ing offices to suit new ways of work­ing?

SM: When defin­ing the ide­al work­place, I used to explain it as a Venn dia­gram of peo­ple, prop­er­ty and process. The peo­ple cir­cle is unchanged, but prop­er­ty has become more place and process is now def­i­nite­ly tech­nol­o­gy. So now one of the biggest ques­tions that com­pa­nies must ask them­selves is: “What do we need and where do we need it?”

If com­pa­nies want to repur­pose the office sub­stan­tial­ly to be more col­lab­o­ra­tive, or cre­ate spaces that have flex­i­ble func­tions, that may dri­ve them to relo­cate or con­sid­er down­siz­ing – and there are costs asso­ci­at­ed with that. There may also be a cost asso­ci­at­ed with exit­ing a lease, which is nev­er easy. And, if you want to change the space fun­da­men­tal­ly, you not only have to think about tech­no­log­i­cal aspects such as con­nec­tiv­i­ty; you also need to con­sid­er how to cre­ate pro­duc­tive, safe and well-ven­ti­lat­ed places to work. 

How might hybrid work­ing influ­ence the future office?

NM: I always use the anal­o­gy of the zedonk, which is a hybrid of a zebra and a don­key. It doesn’t spend three days a week as a zebra and two days a week as a don­key. It’s a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent breed. And that’s what I think hybrid work­ing is about. It’s not about how many days you’re in the office; it’s about fun­da­men­tal­ly chang­ing the way you work.

I’m fair­ly con­fi­dent that there will be some hor­ri­ble hybrids in the next few years. The obvi­ous one, which we expe­ri­enced before the pan­dem­ic, was the meet­ing that was split between dig­i­tal space and phys­i­cal space. That’s a night­mare, because prox­im­i­ty bias means that the peo­ple in the room tend to ignore those who aren’t there. So how do we cre­ate office spaces that enable those kinds of inter­ac­tions to be fric­tion­less?

Can sen­sors and oth­er tech­nolo­gies help to ensure that the future office is more sus­tain­able?

ND: The built envi­ron­ment accounts for an esti­mat­ed 40% of car­bon emis­sions, so we should use the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion to change not only the way we work, but also the impact that offices have on the envi­ron­ment. 

With regard to smart tech­nol­o­gy, the abil­i­ty to deter­mine that no one has been in a room for the past half hour and auto­mat­i­cal­ly adjust its air con­di­tion­ing, say, is one thing. But we also work with many devel­op­ers that are keen to incor­po­rate sus­tain­abil­i­ty into their build­ings from the out­set.

It is impor­tant to track what prod­ucts you put into a build­ing in the first place – some­thing might work fine today, but not nec­es­sar­i­ly 10 years from now. One of the biggest issues we have in the built envi­ron­ment is that you do some­thing, you move on and noth­ing is record­ed. Build­ing infor­ma­tion mod­el­ling and dig­i­tal twin­ning, which enable dig­i­tal records to be asso­ci­at­ed with cor­re­spond­ing phys­i­cal items, can help to solve that.

How might prop­er­ty devel­op­ers approach office projects in future?

TJ: Peo­ple like to be in nature, so bio­phil­ia is impor­tant, as is nat­ur­al light. And peo­ple like fresh air, so they want to open win­dows. But in Lon­don you don’t find many build­ings with open­able win­dows, which is such a basic thing. 

We brought all of this [to our new devel­op­ment in the Lon­don Bor­ough of South­wark]. It had an impact on the cost, so it was maybe 8% more expen­sive than the mar­ket bench­mark. But we went to the board of direc­tors and obtained their approval to invest more in the build­ing. We com­plet­ed the project ear­li­er this year and were award­ed plat­inum Smart Build­ing Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. This high­lights that ten­ants and investors are now open to pay­ing for this kind of prod­uct.

What role will the future office play in employ­ee well­be­ing?

PP: Our strength at Welling­ton Place [a new urban quar­ter in Leeds that includes high-spec offices, inde­pen­dent restau­rants and land­scaped gar­dens] is that we offer peo­ple a real­ly enjoy­able expe­ri­ence. We say: “Don’t think of the office as some­where you go to work; think of it as a place for your dai­ly inter­ac­tions with peo­ple and for your well­be­ing activ­i­ties.”

Exter­nal spaces will also be so impor­tant for encour­ag­ing peo­ple back to the office. Peo­ple want to know that they can unwind out­side in beau­ti­ful sur­round­ings at lunchtime and have a sand­wich and a chat. Because they return to work ener­gised and ready to go, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty goes through the roof. So it’s cru­cial that land­lords not only think about pro­vid­ing bricks and mor­tar. We must also think about how to pro­vide a real com­mu­ni­ty feel.

Are we like­ly to see more small­er region­al offices that are clos­er to people’s homes?

TJ: I think localised offices are a replace­ment for the home office for peo­ple who don’t want to mix their pri­vate lives with office work. But I don’t think they will com­pete with hub offices because of the con­cen­tra­tion of cap­i­tal, tal­ent and ameni­ties that these hubs offer.

NM: It’s true that not every­one wants to work from home, although this has worked for about 70% of peo­ple. But I think they’re now say­ing: “I don’t want to work there all the time,” because it can be lone­ly, or you end up liv­ing at work.

What oth­er trends and tech­nolo­gies might shape the office over the next decade?

PP: Office envi­ron­ments are becom­ing more and more engag­ing spaces to be in, which will con­tin­ue to be a trend.

ND: When you talk about sen­sors and real-time link­ing between a 3D mod­el and a phys­i­cal asset, the impor­tant thing here is data. So there needs to be a gold­en thread of infor­ma­tion run­ning right from the design and con­struc­tion of a build­ing through to deliv­ery and oper­a­tions.

SM: As the ser­vice provider in a con­struct­ed space, our view has always been that data is dol­lars, but data also improves qual­i­ty and ser­vice. And we’re increas­ing­ly using data to auto­mate what we do.

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