Office Design and Refurbishment

Client: Ari Fleet Value: £92k An Office Design and Refurbishment Project for Ari Fleet in Chippenham was not initially considered when we visited to discuss some sound problems in their offices. Their concern was that they knew something had to be done, and had prices for furniture and had an idea on what they liked for carpets, but were not sure how the project could be all tied together, with a total budget, with a list of things that they wanted doing. The other major problem was that the office space was occupied, so the ground floor area would need to have many people moved around in various phases. So Cre8tive were tasked to pull the whole project together. The majority of the ground floor space consisted of around 100+ desks. We also had to assess what future capacity we could accommodate due to the future growth plans of the business. The desk layout was important to show this, so we carried some designs and plans. We felt that an area was needed to encourage staff to meet outside the tea room in a less formal environment and so we allocated some space for this. Our original idea was to have a curved breakfast bar in the bottom corner of the building, joining the two sections of office space together. At this stage the customer thought this a bit too adventurous and they wanted to keep their meeting rooms. Design and Planning work Always the first task in a Design and Refurbishment project is to get the space working correctly without focusing at an early point on the product. Once the basic desk plans were agreed we then looked to examine different suppliers, and we selected a couple from Frem and another supplier. We then set up both types of desks from different suppliers in an office for the staff to try out. The staff actually selected the cheaper version which was a surprise. However the staff voted on the selection and Ari Fleet management went with their selection. We then asked for the corporate colours, we also provided some colour options and carpet choices to show how all of the colours could go together. We were then able to provide budget costs for all of the options. The overall costs including decoration, and the choice of the cheaper furniture met their budget. We then decided to split the work into three phases so the staff could be moved around the other office space available upstairs, giving time for Ari Fleets’ IT people to disconnect and reconnect desks in between the phases. Initial Photographs As you can see from the photographs below the existing screens were red, and the desks were 120 degree. Many years ago this design was quite innovative, but time moves on, particularly there is not the requirement for desk space now with flat screen technology. There is also much less paperwork on desks now, with everything being more electronic. The carpet was also quite worn in places, although a decent quality when fitted the design is no longer made, so hard to patch and make good, so needed to be replaced. Naturally the carpet wears under desk positions with peoples feet and corridor routes, not much can be done about this. (Please visit our website to see these photographs) Phase one side of the building Quite a bit of work was required to prepare the area as you can see from the photographs. A large gang of furniture fitters was required to install of the furniture in a day allowing the customer time to carry out the wiring and gradually move people over from the other areas. Once we finished our work, we planned in 2 weeks to give the customer time to organise staff before we tackled the next phase. In fact the following area ended up almost running on directly from the previous phase, so much quicker than we thought. (Please visit our website to see these photographs) Phase two side of the building (Please visit our website to see these photographs) Phase three Breakout area (Please visit our website to see these photographs) Completed photographs (Please visit our website to see these photographs) Office Design and Refurbishment Projects We really enjoyed this project. The o-operation that Ari management got from the staff was brilliant as they involved the staff in the process all along. This is always important on larger projects where you are affecting the way people work, if you can involve the staff then managing any change is much easier. What was really rewarding is the comments from the customer at the end of the video clip. The refurbishment has changed the way the staff work for the better, there is more involvement and closer team working by using the new break out area. If you would like any help on any project like this please give us a call on 01380 73 88 44 or email us at info@cre8tiveinteriors.co.uk

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