Major High Street Retailer

This true British high street retailer has embarked upon a major review of their London estate and have opted to adopt a “smarter working” philosophy based around agile working in all of their buildings. In order to try this project on a large scale, Flexiform were appointed to re-furnish their impressive Stockley Park building near Heathrow.

The building has been occupied by the client since it was built and accommodates approximately 800 staff operating in both back-office and customer-facing roles. The original layout was a traditional, high-density desk open plan space with meeting rooms around the perimeter. The building also housed a staff restaurant and a small café area. As the furniture style was dated, the space presented itself poorly and did not accurately reflect the way that the client now operates, i.e. in an agile and flexible manner.

Project Data

CLIENT : Major High Street Retailer
LOCATION : Uxbridge, London
PROJECT LEAD : Nick Ruggles
PRODUCTS : Parq Tables, Jot Up Sit/Stand Desking, Freestor Accent Lockers, Additions 2 Tables, Bespoke Freestor Hinged Door Wardrobe, Bespoke Furniture, Freestor Hinged Door Storage, Meeting Booths, High Back Sofas, Meeting Chairs.
WORKSPACES : Agile Workspaces: Collaboration Areas, Quiet Working, Traditional Bench Desking, Meeting Rooms / VC Facilities, Informal Meeting Areas, Breakout Areas.
SERVICES : Interior Design Support, Space Planning Support, Re-manufacture of Existing Furniture, Storage, Environmental Recycling.

“By re-manufacturing the client’s existing desking, we re-used 700 workstations and extended their product lifecycle by a minimum of 10 years. Reusing furniture was at the heart of our client’s social values and we managed to save 47.6 tonnes of carbon in the process. All of this couldn’t be done without our Yorkshire based factory and in-house engineering skills”
– Nick Saunders, Sales Director

Agile Workspace

To create the agile space required in this major office furniture installation, a number of strategies were employed. The old desks were re-manufactured by Flexiform to reduce the footprint and to refresh the look, this reduced the floor space needed for the desks, freeing up rooms for other uses. The restaurant was retained but refreshed to enhance its relevance to the staff, but also making the area adaptable to become a more ad-hoc meeting space.

Enclosed meeting rooms were retained but the sizes and shape of the rooms were altered to make them more relevant to the variety of meetings required. These meeting rooms were also enhanced with improved video conferencing (VC) facilities and tables to reduce the need for travel and increase the agile working provenance of the space. Floor space was also maximised by reducing desk footprints to create a number of new spaces.

Semi-private meeting pods for 2-8 people and large collaboration tables were added to create additional meeting space, hot desking and collaborative project areas, this helped create the smart working ideology by providing various workspaces to suit the staffs’ task in hand. We added a number of acoustic media booths with monitor arms, integrated tables and power & data for video conferencing and team meetings. These worked alongside our acoustic screens, helping divide zones and absorb distracting noise, giving users privacy and space to concentrate which improved staff wellbeing.

All of these changes have delivered a highly flexible and agile workspace designed for modern, activity-based working principles. The Smarter Working project team carried out a great deal of pre-engagement with staff to explain what was going to be established and then post-installation training to ensure that the principles and uses are understood and enjoyed. The overall impact has been to create a much more attractive, vibrant and flexible space, which has enabled users to work in a more agile and collaborative manner.