Alternative Work Styles

All of the protocols general contractors are putting in place to keep their workers safe during the ongoing pandemic—rearranging shifts, monitoring temperatures, separating crews on site—will not move a project to completion without the dozens of inspections, site visits, and construction observation events that take place during the course of construction. But with many owners, architects, and inspectors unable to visit job sites due to stay-at-home mandates, construction progress can stall. One solution is the virtual site visit, opening the door to remote construction observations.

AMS CAD + CAFM Solutions is offering a webinar on a Phase One approach to leveraging technology to assist in the gradual transition back to the workplace. "How Technology Can Help Transition Back to the Workplace" will review areas of planning an initial return of employees to the workplace and how technology can assist in many areas from seating for social distancing to hoteling and hardware.

General contractors and construction management firms are taking advantage of enforced downtime to train workers in new skills and technologies. Barton Malow is based in Southfield, Michigan, where a statewide order has halted construction on most projects. The company is leveraging the shutdown as an opportunity for employees to pursue project management certification and other qualifications.

G|M Business Interiors is offering the Workplace for Breakfast webinar series in April and May of 2020. Topics related to remote working will be explored, including preparation strategies for the return to the physical workplace. Sessions include:

To keep apprised of the dynamics in the current construction environment, Vermeulens, a professional services firm focused on construction cost estimation and pre-construction cost control, has scheduled twice-weekly virtual roundtable discussions with industry leaders in Central and East Coast regions to identify ongoing trends, influencing factors, construction administration issues, and the market outlook in the construction industry. Economic indicators are in flux, and while employment in construction seemed to have avoided the drop seen in other sectors through mid-March, a survey conducted by the Associated General Contractors of America (AGC) shows that conditions are worsening, with 55 percent of the 1,600 repondents nationwide reporting they had been directed to hault work on at least one project, and 27 percent have furloughed or terminated construction workers. The next federal jobs report, which will be issued at the end of April, will provide a truer picture, says James Vermeulen, managing principal of Vermeulens.

FM:Systems is offering a webcast on the use of digital solutions to enhance productivity on May 14, 2020. If you would like to build a smarter workplace, optimize space utilization, and enhance employee experience, FM Systems’ strategies will enable you to leverage connected devices and applications to deliver the flexibility that your staff require. By the end of 2020, mobile workers will account for 75 percent of the total workforce.

As workplace environments continually change to accommodate the diversity of today’s employee workstyles, choosing the most appropriate furniture is an increasingly important aspect of the design process. While furniture selection may have been an afterthought in the past—a decision to be considered only after a building was constructed or renovated—many organizations now realize the value of putting furniture selection on the front burner. Furniture can impact workplace change initiatives by empowering employees, improving employee satisfaction and productivity, enhancing collaboration, and improving overall organizational efficiencies. The selection and placement of furniture—from standing desks, height-adjustable tables, room dividers, storage space, and myriad seating options—are now being aligned with an organization’s objectives.

Imagine a baby born today. She’s smart and science-minded. Through good luck and hard work, she earns her doctorate early, and by age 31, she is solidly embarked on a research career. What does her lab look like? That’s what two SmithGroup thought leaders—Adam Denmark, director of Laboratory Planning, and Steve Palumbo, Science and Technology Studio leader—sought to find out with their team members though a yearlong research initiative they called LAB2050. Collectively, the SmithGroup team and their client advisors defined six categories that they used to project current trends forward—technology, funding and partnerships, energy and the environment, collaboration, synergies, and planning and design—and to visualize the new ones that might emerge.

Asking a company to define its culture often results in an ambiguous response, but answering that question is key to addressing business concerns with the most effective workplace and organizational design solutions. Organizational strategies reflect the structure of the business, can identify workflow and system inadequacies, and should support workplace design. Assessing a company’s business objectives, functional needs, space utilization, necessary workplace improvements, user requirements, and operating capabilities can be instrumental in making the best design decisions. This approach is built on a foundation of viewing design as an enterprise-level service capable of solving business problems, and not just real estate issues.

Georgia Tech opened the $375 million Coda building in May of 2019. Located at Technology Square in Atlanta, the 755,000-sf innovation hub provides interdisciplinary research space for Georgia Tech's data analytics and computational science programs, as well as offering leasable offices and labs for industry partners. The 21-story tower features a central piazza with a spiral staircase leading to the Collaboration Core, a series of six three-story vertical atriums that join the wings of the building.

Colleges and universities are rethinking their workplaces to align their space with how people work today and to use space to achieve their strategic goals. Beyond macro forces reshaping higher education in terms of access, accountability, and financial stability, there is a confluence of financial, environmental, technological, and cultural factors prompting this change, including increasing numbers of administrative staff and a growing disengagement among faculty and staff. But the most common mistake that institutions make when trying to change their workplace is assuming that they are trying to solve a space problem. Even if the impetus for a project is a space problem—you’re out of space and have no place to put the new faculty or staff member you just hired!—you won’t solve it by thinking about it that way. It’s more complex and nuanced than that. What you need first is a workplace strategy, a coherent statement that describes how your space will be used to help you achieve your larger strategic goals.

The Center for Active Design will release Fitwel v2.1 in June of 2019. Promoting the creation of facilities that optimize health, Fitwel was developed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention with the Center for Active Design acting as its licensed operator. The updated version of Fitwel includes a new construction pathway for pre-occupancy and post-occupancy projects and now provides both a Design Certification and a Built Certification. Existing facilities will continue to be eligible for certification in the Built category.

Using the Lean continuous improvement process to increase efficiency and productivity is seen frequently in the manufacturing and automotive sectors, but less often in animal research facilities. Those who have used Lean to overhaul animal facilities say there is a lack of understanding in the industry about how this methodology can drastically boost efficiency, lower operating costs, decrease waste, improve sustainability, enhance program flexibility, increase capacity, and lower space requirements.

When Texas A&M created a new set of buildings for its veterinary school, it sought to provide spaces that would work for current methods of teaching sciences, but also flexibility to accommodate future change. Change, as we all know, can be difficult, so the process included not just demountable walls and flexible furnishings, but also a focus on change management among the faculty.

Innovation has become the lifeblood of corporate and institutional longevity. Whether a disruptive breakthrough or a line extension, more often than not it is the result of an idea that follows an obscure networked path before evolving into a viable new product or business model. Facilities have a huge impact on the pace and outcome of the innovation process. A variety of spaces, each tailored to foster a specific type of activity, is essential to the innovative workplace. “At the end of the day, innovation is all about providing the right spaces to enable people to use their creative brains in the best manner to come up with new ideas,” says John Campbell, president and lead workplace strategist at the architecture firm FCA. “The design must address the human behaviors that drive the process.”