FSL Group provided initial feasibility design and budget costing advice on the building then followed up with full planning drawings, prepared the design and access statement, met with the local councilors and heritage association and drove through to a successful approval.
The build project was awarded as a full turn-key design and build contract with FSL responsible for the internal conversion, external renovation and construction of the associated new part underground car park and landscaping.
Mechanically a central plant room with full district heating system running individual HIU boilers with wet heating to each apartment, full MHRV throughout, removal of the internal lift shaft and creating two new lift shafts, provision of new corridor smoke ventilation shafts have all been provided.
Heritage approved
With a clever use of space
Externally new openings for doors, windows and roof lights were created, heritage approved fenestration fitted and full repair and redecoration carried out. An adjacent part underground car park in a matching style to blend has been designed.
Luxury apartments
All covered with an NHBC guarantee
Internally a mix of one and two bedroom apartments complete with fitted kitchens and integrated appliances, bathrooms and en-suites.
Each apartment is planned with veneered doors,energy efficient lighting and electrical appliances along with all floor finishes to every room. Every apartment is to be to a high standard with the development being covered by an NHBC 10 year structural guarantee.
Image gallery
Get in touch with the office refurbishment experts
You’re not alone, it’s time to make the space work for your business
Your current office doesn’t have to remain stale with inflexible working arrangements that don’t help business growth.
The average length of a commercial office space lease is between 5 and 10 years, with many businesses choosing to avoid the upheaval and disruption of a move as long as they can. In addition, the uncertain political climate has certainly had even the strongest of industries battening down the hatches and staying put in their current premises until it’s clearer exactly how the economy is going to be affected by change.
An uncertain future for the country though, doesn’t have to mean putting up with stale, dated office interior dynamics that hinder business growth, dynamics ,productivity and brand image.
It’s true, the UK work environment is providing lots of challenges across the board, but there’s also some exciting opportunities for change too…
Inefficient working styles?
Do you need to be more agile?
Agile working is a combination of working differently and utilising new technology to aid those changes. Therefore, it makes logical sense that a change in furniture and decor can help aid this transition for businesses. If you’re looking to cultivate a more productive environment where the team can work where and how they want to, consider reaching out to one of our workplace consultants. We have extensive experience in designing innovative office changes that make a big impact and enhance agile working practices specific to your business needs.
“Agile is an attitude, not a technique with boundaries. An attitude has no boundaries, so we wouldn’t ask ‘can I use agile here’ but rather ‘how would I act in an agile way’ or ‘how agile can we be here?’.”
Alistair Cockburn
Instead, we use effective change management using staff user groups and communication to ensure there are no nasty surprises, only plenty of great ones.
It’s more than a lick of paint
An office refurbishment based on insight and ingenuity
An insightful Forbes article discussed how over 50% of employees aren’t engaged in their work with nearly 20% saying they are actively disengaged. The write-up continued to explain how innovative office design is the best way to actively engage workers and encourage dynamic, productive teamwork. Simply put, offices that are collaborative and utilise activity based working are happier, because employees are free to redefine where and how they work.
We know that’s what modern business owners really want to achieve. Savvy business owners aren’t looking to adapt their office space to simply ‘look’ good. It’s an empty investment to get a few nice looking banners, some edgy looking chairs, some glass walls and the odd cacti dotted around for ‘outdoors in’ chic. It’s style without substance, and sometimes, there’s not even any style. To establish ourselves as industry leaders, we work in a way that ensures each and every office adaptation made is made for a distinct reason. We design an office based on:
Workplace consultancy and study
New furniture acquisition & recommendation
Space reinvention
Interior revitalisation
Recommending and supporting new types of space usage
We have carefully created a way of working that is as innovative and flexible as the offices we design and install.
Are You Cashing In On Every Square Foot Of The Office?
Every business welcomes additional income, especially when it comes with a need for no additional equipment, training or staff. Have you considered setting up a demise wall, so that the space you pay for, but you don’t use, can be utilised by those looking to sublet? Freelancers, startups, smaller businesses and anybody needing temporary professional space to work in have money to give you, just for using a space that you already have.
We take care of the legal side of things
Skip the legal headache of office adaptations…
The average business owner works nearly 46 hours a week, usually including weekends. If you just read that through a yawn, and following a glug of coffee, the chances are you already know exactly how little time you have. We understand that modern business owners and management staff are extremely busy. We know you are unlikely to want the headache of the legalities behind a new office fit, despite wanting the benefits of getting a better working space. We take care of the Building Control, License To Alter packs and landlord approvals, so that you don’t have to. We value your time.
We’ll project manage the refurbishment
Project management comes as standard
Maybe you would love an office refit but you just don’t want the hassle of having to manage another project when you’re already so busy. Would you change your mind if an effective, professional team made the entire experience a breeze for you? No need to chase anything up, no nasty surprises, no rubbish communication, just an easy process that results in a phenomenal office designed to suit your business needs. If you work with the best, you get the best experience.
Zero disruption during the office refurbishment
It’s oh so quiet shh, shh…
There’s no blowing a fuse, and certainly no WHAM BAM with the way that our experienced team works in offices. No extensive disruption, dust or noise. We know that modern businesses are looking to avoid all of that upheaval, that is one of the reasons why you haven’t moved right? Instead, you can expect easy-to-use swing spaces to use whilst the renovation is done. Any loud and messy work that needs doing is completed strictly out of hours.
Let your space talk your brand
An office refurbishment palette to enhance brand culture
Using colour, furniture, imagery, layout and a wide variety of suggestions and ideas, we can actively enhance your brand culture with a well-thought out office design. The mission and values of your brand should be reflected in the place you work, creating the kind of working environment that truly reflects who you are as a business.
“Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine, and at last, you create what you will.” George Bernard Shaw.
Modern businesses like yours can benefit from a complete change in workspace, without having to change location. Businesses can benefit from our extensive experience, insight and creative working processes to help cultivate the kind of office environment and culture that actively enhances productivity, happiness and collaboration.
Get in touch with the office refurbishment experts
More and more information like this is dropping into the headlines daily. It really is no surprise that employers have no choice but to step up their game when it comes to providing a more fluid and dramatically less linear way of working for employees if they want to retain the best in the industry.
How can forward-thinking businesses snare excellent candidates these days? Stealing them away from remote working and freelance offerings without compromising on a carefully cultivated office environment?
Activity Based Working: What Is It?
If you are interested in creating an office environment that benefits your business and every single member of your team, activity based workplace design should be high on your agenda.
The concept was first properly formed in 1983 by Robert Luchetti, and the term activity based working coined in groundbreaking book The Art Of Working by Erik Veldhoen. In the early 90’s, the implementation of the concept occurred in the Netherlands and has spread worldwide since.
It works on the basis that rather than trudging in to the office to spend the day at your allocated desk, you simply don’t have one single assigned space to work in, you actually have many. You can choose from a workspace design with a wide selection of different zones or areas, designed to support certain types of task. Workplace consultants will create spaces to facilitate needs such as focus, working as a team, or for training.
As each area has to accommodate the needs of a wide range of users and it has to be flexible for that reason. When implementing ABW managers and supporting staff have to first be on board with the huge change that comes with this new way of working so that they are in a position to help employees transition as smoothly as possible.
The Benefits Of Activity Based Working
Who doesn’t love a desk? Lots of employees enjoy their own dedicated workspace, with their own cacti, maybe a picture of the kids and the comfort of knowing that is their space to work and nobody else’s.
So why change anything?
Activity-based working comes with many benefits, predominantly recognising that employees do have a wide range of workstyle needs depending on the type of task they need to complete. Rather than have a ‘one-size-fits-all’ desk, ABW staff can enjoy the choice of workspace, enhancing their own productivity.
Architecture and workplace design appreciated by staff
Better communication in the workplace in general
Easier socialisation
Ease of exchanging information
Better office dynamics
Better office acoustics
More comfortable furniture
With the right workplace design and the right implementation, there are many benefits to ABW for many different types of business and organisation.
Is Activity Based Working Right For Everyone?
A study by Leesman Index suggests that certain types of workers are pretty attached to their workstation and they represent 30% of the workforce, and a further 41% will explore other workspaces, but still remain tethered to a workspace to call their own.
This does represent a significant issue for businesses trying to transition to much better working practices, especially as certain job types are so linear and straight-forward, they don’t necessarily call for a more flexible way of working.
Another potential hurdle for ABW is office ergonomics, or rather, ensuring that the ergonomics in the workplace are correctly integrated into the shared zones created by workplace consultants.
Statistics tell us that over 3 quarters of British workers spend up to 9 hours at their desk every single day with over a third of those people spending up to 6 hours seated. Those figures alone tell us that a different way of formatting an office is likely incredibly good for the health and lifestyle of the British workforce. However, additional figures reveal that a change like activity based working needs to be paired with strong ergonomics of the new workspaces.
64% of workers feel their office environment has negatively impacted their health, 45% don’t feel their employer cares about their health and 26% aren’t even aware of risk assessments for workspaces.
So a change in the office layout without the right risk assessments and ergonomic consideration could spell disaster for any company looking to keep their employees healthy and happy (and looking to avoid being sued!).
ABW can be ergonomically sound, but the organisation implementing the change should seek to employ workplace consultants with expertise in office ergonomics, ensuring that health and safety are a central feature of the new commercial fit out.
“The secret to getting ahead is getting started” – Mark Twain
Adopting an activity based working office design is a great way for businesses to begin future-proofing, offering a flexible and modern environment for their employees. The focus is on we and not I, and on the work produced, not on the way it is produced. With ABW there is no specific place for work to be completed, but also, there are multiple spaces that it can be completed.
Working in this way does require a transitional period, experienced workplace consultants and a detailed analysis and approach to implementation for any chance at a successful result.
If successful, activity based working can bring a wealth of benefits to any company, initially helping to retain and attract employees with a focus on what they can do, not where they can do it. Businesses looking to invest in activity based working are cultivating a modern and truly flexible workspace designed to accommodate optimum productivity, health and happiness.
Clerkenwell design week…what better way to look out for new ideas, trends and inspiration.
Its very easy as a designer spending everyday in and out of meetings to get set in your comfort zone and use product that you know have worked for you in the past.
Clerkenwell design week encourages designers to explore everything from the big items to the smaller things that get missed out till the last minute. Having a day or two out of the office with your colleges to explore these things gives you a better perspective of who they are as designers a what they can bring to the table. We all got to get inspiration outside the confinements of google and Pinterest and got ahead of the game by seeing and testing products that still had not been released to the public.
Showroom highlight
Frovi
We started our day going through all the furniture showrooms and ended up in Frovi where they had displayed their very new range Colony which had not yet been released. A beautiful display of agile working, in a time where people need it the most. With a few amendments you can create a lounge into a meeting room or office, perfect for any open plan area.
In a time where plants and retro furniture are the hype of design. Ocee has perfected these small items of furniture for any teapoint or collaboration area by bringing small bursts of colour into the space.
Lighting is one of the most important things in a room and it’s the one thing that is so commonly pushed to the side till the very last minute. I must admit as a designer there have been times that I’ve left my lighting design till the very end of a project and struggled to find the absolute best solutions.
The Lighting exhibition that had taken place in the very popular nightclub fabric was one for the books. You didn’t need to be a designer to appreciate what was displayed, everywhere you looked there was a product for someone or somewhere.
Clerkenwell isn’t just about new products in the market, it’s also about refreshing your memory on existing products and finding cheaper alternatives to things that you like. It’s a time where all designers come together and make new connections.
We have recently completed a 35,000 sq. ft workplace fit-out for IRIS Software in their new headquarters based at Heathrow Approach on the M4 contains many high end design features including a 17 metre curved wall as the backdrop to a solid corian reception desk. Accommodating the third and fourth floors it is now home to 240 staff members who have access to a large collaboration wing, bookable meeting rooms, quiet rooms, ad hoc meeting spaces and state of the video conferencing and iPad controlled coffee machines from our friends at Scanomat.
The result of this project has been the undertakingof furniture and fit-out project for IRIS Software’s further twelve offices across the UK.
We have changed, we are now a group. Our group structure has been created to simplify our client offering & align the culture & values across all of our business disciplines.
Our group of companies combines our unique skills & common desire to succeed to help bring workplaces to life for businesses & the users of their new environments. Our collective goal is to create interactions that emphasise your brand, accelerate your culture & incubate productivity through well-being & a passion for the job at hand.
The FSL Group creation serves as an exciting step for our business, it’s a
shared commitment to continue delivering exceptional to our clients.
Simon Vaughan, Managing Director, FSL Group
Our comprehensive service offering includes workplace design & fit-out, detail, build & traditional fit-out, workplace consultancy, commercial furniture solutions & move management.
We spend a huge chunk of our lives sat at our desks, the time there is reducing for some, but not all. So we asked some end users ‘what annoys you about your work environment?’. Here’s what they said…
Too cramped
Definitely a big one, this. But the problem wasn’t really that the desk itself was too small, but rather there was too much stuff everywhere due to a lack of storage space. Our desks have specially designed storage units that are a perfect place to keep your work bits and bobs while staying well out the way of the task at hand. And if you need that bit extra room, why not consider a monitor arm to get that up off the surface? And since our desks come with cable management systems, you won’t have to worry about a spaghetti nightmare of cables making your space feel more cluttered than it really is.
Make you ache
We’re not built for sitting at a desk all day. Lots of people report having trouble with their necks and backs after being sat at their desks for long periods. Sit & Stand desks are seeing a huge swell in popularity in the past couple of years, as they allow you to spend some of your work time standing, which not only reduces aches and pains but burns more calories, reduces the risk of obesity, diabetes and heart diseases and decreases those afternoon feelings of lethargy and sleepiness we all feel.
No privacy
Despite it having been shown to decrease productivity, we all accept that open-plan workspaces are here to stay. But working right on top of your colleagues can leave people feeling uncomfortable and can increase stress levels. You can get the best of both worlds with our desk-mounted privacy screens and lockable storage, which gives employees the sense of their own private space while still keeping the flexibility of an open plan office environment.
Work trends have shifted dramatically. We’re not referring to Simon Sinek’s wonderful talk on Millennials, we are talking about how the traditional office environment is changing, although, a recent article did study the perfect Millennial office.
Trends change. We’ve seen users come out of cubes & into open plan, home working & collaboration. Spend within the office interior is increasing with timber residential style furniture & soft seating environments for collaboration/ breakout.
These trends are manifested from a desire or perhaps a need to change our lives, what happens in society and in our own worlds continues to drive change in the office. Despite the fact that when you sit on the train, the tube, the bus or walk down the street you can’t help but notice that many are glued to smart phones, thus making us less social, we have a desire within the workplace to be more sociable, to collaborate, to maximise our productivity whilst in that office environment.
We are experiencing a social & technological shift in society
The traditional office or work environment is shifting due to technological influences, a change in demographics and a social shift that creates alternative and new expectations within the office. We have all seen over the years the offices of Google, Twitter, Apple, Facebook and the like, filled with trendies playing pool, not using the stairs and working in a space that provides great comfort, greater freedom of expression and movement. Supported by wireless networking, airdrop & touch screen technology, the work place is merging with our social space, with our residential space (in look & feel). The result for business is greater collaboration, greater creativity, a happier team and ultimately a greater staff retention and production output.
The UK headquarters for renowned oil and gas company Perenco at 8 Hanover Square. This new home was designed by MoreySmith for the 200-strong multi-disciplinary team and was been designed to provide maximum flexibility to enhance collaborative working in an inspiring environment.
We were introduced to the project for our exceptional contacts within the furniture industry. Here’s what MoreySmith say about the project:
On the fifth floor, with views over Hanover Square, a café bar area encourages employees to come together to work and socialise. This informal setting is designed with relaxed lighting and seating around the central café bar, emanating a contemporary lounge area.
The upper three floors are connected by a beautifully sculpted cast concrete staircase, with a helical form inspired by drilling mechanisms. The stairs link the café bar, sixth floor reception and executive offices. The double-height space centrepiece is a collaboration between MoreySmith and Studio Drift; the artists created a bespoke kinetic art installation, titled Flylight, that mimics a murmuration of starlings
MoreySmith has used a selection of natural materials including timber flooring, cut and patterned stone and leather wall panelling with bronze inlay. The metalwork details on the staircases and fret-cut features have created a unique identity for the company.
