How much space does the company need?
Office rents are a huge overhead for any organisation. When we were asked to help our client, who was nearing the end of their lease to advise on the size of space they might need for the next ten years we were more than pleased to help.
Before going into a detailed analysis of room requirements and ways of working, we carried out a simple analysis of desk sizes and their allocation.
In the ten years since they fitted out their offices, this organisation, like many others, had evolved their working practices with many working off site. Some were happy to embrace desk sharing; others being more office based required a desk. But what size?
The historic industry standard desk size of 1800mm now seemed palatial for this City firm..
Desk size can impact on rental costs
Before getting into any of the detail briefing, a simple review understanding how differing desk sizes might impact on space saved (and therefore rents paid) was carried out.
Switching to a 1500 desk (still a generous sized desk) might mean a saving of nearly £600 per person.
If the company has an appetite to use smaller desks, for those less office based, then the saving might be as much as £950 per desk. If desk sharing is embraced, then the saving might be as great as £3,000 per person.
These illustrations look solely at desks and not room types. We find that, dependent on the nature of the company, smaller desks mean more noise and an increase in the need for areas of quiet working. So, alongside the desk review, a thorough review of the business, work styles and culture would need to be carried out to gain accurate calculation of the real space required.
However, our client wanted to calculate a budget for their future spend, as well as gain an idea of how much space to look for. Our initial analysis gave them the comfort there were realistic and significant savings to be made.