Completed Projects

Infra Red Capital Partners, West End, London, UK

Size

1,670sqm

Brief

With a lease expiry due in Q4 2020 the investment house, upon recommendation, approached Sonny Hasan + Associates to ascertain if the current premises in the West End could accommodate the projected growth and what the appetite was within the organisation to adopting “Agile Working”.

Approach

Our approach to meet the client’s requirements was to define two workstreams:

A: To understand how the facilities were being occupied

B: To ascertain if there was an appetite within the organisation to move to agile working and business readiness

Outcome

Workstream A. To understand how the facilities were being occupied a space utilisation study was carried out over a four week period, consisting of the workplace, meeting rooms, break out areas and the staff room, together with filing and storage audits. We also undertook an analysis of the floorplates to see if it was efficiently and effectively space planned. 

General occupation across all floors including spare desks and support space was circa 58%. Whilst there were sufficient meeting rooms, capacities were seldom reached, primarily due to the imbalance of meeting room sizes. Our analysis of the floorplates determined greater efficiencies and business effectiveness could be gained by restacking and respace planning, and in doing so release additional space for areas such as break out, quiet zones, project areas and collaborative hubs that could support ‘Agile Working” if that was the direction the organisation wanted to take.

Workstream B. Understanding the appetite for change was achieved through 1-2-1 interviews with the MD, COO, head of IT, HR and FM, together with workshops and online staff surveys. In general there was appetite within the organisation to move to agile working. Some departments were already working in an agile manner whilst others were anchored. We demonstrated that the existing premises could meet the future requirements of the company till Q3 2019 on a 1-2-1 desk sharing ratio and till the end of its lease and beyond if they adopted agile working, by some departments adopting either a 1:1.4 and/or a 1:1.25 desk sharing ratio.