Office design shake-up

This is according to the British Council for Offices (BCO) in its recently published guide on Best practice specification in offices.

The guide’s editor Tim Battle says: “The main implication for building services engineers is that they will play a much more dominant role at the beginning of the design process.”

Out of the four mixed-use developments present some of the biggest challenges to designers. Practical and legislative constraints such as separating circulation for means of escape and fire compartmentation as well as different structural grids can result in a loss of rentable floor area and inefficient layouts. While recent revisions to the Building Regulations Approved Document Part E and L requiring more stringent acoustic separation and reduced glazing for residential uses may affect the facade design and constrain uses within defined zones.

However, Battle does raise a note of caution. “Paradoxically there are insufficient numbers of well trained building services to take this role on,” a situation he puts down to the spate of course closures where building services engineers are taught alongside architects and other engineering disciplines.

The Guide also highlights the need for more effective tools to measure what aspects of the built environment directly influence business performance. A methodology to measure how how occupiers use their workspaces, and which factors are considered essential for the occupier to improve business performance is also required.