A Pathway To Smart
Here at ICONICS UK we are on our own journey to a smarter office. We know we don’t have the largest or most luxurious workplace in the world, but we do believe anyone should be able to digitally transform their building(s) without breaking the bank or negatively impacting the environment. So, here’s part one of our 2023 office refurb journey to date.
Our UK HQ doesn’t have hotel-like amenities, custom-commissioned artwork, or biophilic walls (like many of the wonderful buildings our clients occupy), but we have continued to adapt to our future way of working by providing awesome agile working options for our staff and embracing our own technology to enable cultural and environmental change.
Phase 1 – From the Ground (Floor) Up
Phase 1 of the refurb started on the ground floor. We have repurposed underutilized meeting rooms and our old hat in-person training center to provide a new suite of multi-purpose collaboration and hot desking spaces. With around 50 local staff working regularly at this office (most if not all in a hybrid capacity), we are living and breathing on a smaller scale what our blue-chip clients are doing at scale in cities like London, Manchester, Birmingham, and Edinburgh.
Clive Walton, UK Managing Director said:
“I am absolutely thrilled to see how fast the team has repurposed our old ground-floor office space in Dudley. In a matter of weeks, our old and somewhat underutilised training rooms have been flipped to create cutting-edge collaboration spaces full-to-the-brim with our technology. This investment is more than us building another product zone to run demos and test labs, it’s an enabler for us to work smarter and more efficiently as a team”
Better Choice, Collaboration, and Overall Team Spirit
In addition to the furniture and space upgrades, we continued using our IBSS workplace booking solution so our staff can easily search and book a variety of workspaces and things. Now the team has even more choice when it comes to desk setups (including dual monitors, single monitors, team tables, and height-adjustable desks) and AV spaces (for enhanced product testing and collaborative working).
The baseline occupancy and booking data already shows that the small but much-need refurb changes have enabled more cross-department touch points for improved business output and relationship building. The staff feedback via our own tenant mobile app - Roamer has been great too, and that’s what ultimately matters. We're not finished yet, but hopefully soon we can begin to say goodbye to overcrowded desk huddles and congested breakout zones.
The Environmental Need to Retrofit Existing Buildings
In 2040 today’s building stock will constitute two-thirds of buildings that exist – to hit the Paris Agreement climate targets we must repurpose buildings in a sustainable way, this includes turning ageing offices into flexible workplaces and derelict yards into homes and retail malls.
The good news is, that a data-driven approach to sustainability and workplace can enable the transformation of all sorts of real estate. If nothing else this project demonstrates that technology can and should scale to budgets, tight timescales, business goals, building types, and IT infrastructure. This only works when technology vendors adopt an evolutionary and outcome-driven approach to smart.
So What’s Next?
When asked “what’s next for the office”, Andrew Dyke, Director of Intelligent Buildings at ICONICS UK said:
“We’ve got some really cool things in the pipeline for the Dudley office, and this was just the first phase within a much wider office refurb program. We are taking a space-by-space and floor-by-floor approach to refurbing the current building - the main reason being that the office is busier than ever right now, and we want to make sure there's plenty of room open for everyone that needs it”
If you’re interested in learning more about our office journey, or how we are helping firms of all sizes digitize their Commercial Real Estate, we’d love to have a conversation about your Smart Building aims and objectives.