From our experience and research companies currently carrying out office space reorganisations in the UK are currently achieving an area m² per person NIA somewhere in between best practice and legislative minimums.
It is worth noting that the British Council for Offices states that in the past 14m² per person has been used by architects to determine the number of Male and Female toilets required in a new building in addition to the capacity and number of lifts installed. Changes may therefore be required to the building core itself if office densities are being increased. Additional toilets may need to be installed to meet Health & Safety requirements. Newer buildings are typically designed to cater for higher densities
What factors affect how much space you need?
There are many influences on the occupation of office space and the number of staff it can accommodate.
Your organisation
- Company culture and the type of work carried out – Hierarchical space distribution and cellular space (i.e. individual offices) can greatly affect overall space requirements. Space distribution based on task rather than seniority can be introduced to increase flexibility, standardise and potentially reduce the space requirements per person. Individual offices should be kept to a minimum and work as meeting space when they are not occupied. Some organisations will require larger workstations than others due to the nature of work that they carry out.
- Support space – The requirements of meeting space, reprographics, breakout and filing areas can vary considerably between companies. We would recommend a review of meeting room use (meeting rooms are typically used for only 10% of the time they are available for) and a filing audit to determine your actual requirements. We can then propose ideal meeting room numbers / sizes and filing systems that will help to minimise space use. Spaces such as breakout areas, quiet rooms and open plan meeting space may actually increase as a pay back for reducing space overall. A ‘rule of thumb’ is to reinvest 50% of the space saved into better staff facilities.
- Technology and furniture – Existing oversized furniture obviously results in lower densities. The use of flat screens and laptops can result in smaller workstations being required. New telephone systems allow staff to log in at any desk and aid flexible working. See the Workplace regulations for minimum workstation sizes for PC users.
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Your building limitations
- Width of escape routes and number of fire escapes.
- Numbers of WC’s – Workplace Regulations state a minimum of WC’s per male and female staff.
- Building services – Approved Document F ‘’Means of Ventilation’’ requires an air supply rate of fresh air from outside of 10 litres per second per person.
- The structural grid and floor plate size – Some buildings work more efficiently than others due to size of the floor plate and structural grid. Awkwardly shaped or narrow floor plates can result in wasted space resulting in a lower possible density.
Conclusion
There is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to determining a m² rate per person NIA for a particular company.
We review each client and their office space in detail to ascertain what works for a particular organisation. Often decisions by key personnel regarding space requirements are made without the adequate study to make an accurate judgement. It is worth considering that too little space can inhibit growth and too much will add to your overall costs.
Another strategy to increasing the number of staff that your office space caters for is through flexible working. This is the creation of a range of alternative work settings for staff, moving away from a 1 desk for 1 employee mentality. A utilisation study needs to be carried out to show how desk space is typically used throughout the day to determine what savings are achievable. Typically this would be carried out 4 times a day over a two week period. The average desk utilisation in a typical office is only 40%. Organisations have typically achieved workstation sharing ratios of 1.3 – 1 to 1.4 – 1 which results in a considerable space saving. Interestingly a recent study by Johnson Controls found that 83% of staff want to work in a mobile way!
The result of sharing workstations can actually result in lower densities per workstation which can then be in the region of Best Practice i.e. 12 – 17m2 whilst catering for higher numbers of staff. If this solution is suitable for your company it is potentially a far more satisfactory solution than packing out office space with workstations that are rarely used!
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