Engineering firm Clough Ltd is typical of many groups operating in Western Australia’s thriving resources sector.
Engineering firm Clough Ltd is typical of many groups operating in Western Australia’s thriving resources sector.
As its business has expanded, Clough has outgrown the four floors of its St Georges Terrace headquarters, which means its employees are now spread across several buildings throughout the city.
In a bid to contain its employee sprawl in a backdrop of soaring rents and limited office availability, Clough embarked on a massive redevelopment of the fifth floor of its 251 St Georges Terrace head office this year.
It called in Willetton-based Interite Commercial Interiors to help it reconfigure its operations.
The renovations started in January, cost more than $1 million, and were completed two months ago.
Where there was once room for 45 people, there is now room for 90.
Clough has also managed to double the space of its employee kitchen, increase the number of meeting rooms from two to four and overhaul its mail room to add new security features.
The expansion was undertaken in two phases and was largely the result of stripping back the majority of the offices on the 1,175 square metre floor.
Before the refit there were 40 individual offices; there are now eight, with three of those are for use by clients visiting the premises.
Overseeing the renovations and the cultural shift from offices to open-plan was Clough project co-ordinator Darryl Thomas.
He was one of those who lost an office, after spending 25 years within the confines of his own cloistered space.
Senior staff members are afforded more space, with their partitioned areas accommodating room for a seat opposite their desk and more storage facilities.
With the window-hugging offices stripped away, an abundance of natural light pours in and all of Clough’s employees on the floor get sweeping river views and flashes of greenery from the trees that line the exterior of the building.
Take a step up to the sixth floor, where renovations have only modified things slightly, and it is noticeably darker despite the number of florescent lights on the ceiling.
Mr Thomas said the fifth floor had been converted from a rabbit warren to a modern and open work environment that enhanced day-to-day communication for employees.
Clough built its headquarters in 1980s and, with computers not as relied upon as they are today, big storage areas were placed down the centre of the fifth floor. As the company grew, therefore, its employees were wedged in clusters around the offices.
But a lot of the storage facilities were now unnecessary, Mr Thomas said.
“Most of our storage is done off-site, but the older systems meant we were storing things like manuals and a lot of people were hoarding things we didn’t really need or that you can now access on your computer,” Mr Thomas told WA Business News.
Aside from stripping back the offices and pulling out storage rooms, the company also put in new carpets and additional lighting, plus new blinds, a new ceiling and brand new office furniture.
Slim-line storage units were also utilised to free up more office space.
A new kitchen area with tables and chairs has also proved popular with its employees, Mr Thomas said.
“We used to have this old dingy kitchen but we doubled the size of it and put in some chairs and tables,” he said.
Mr Thomas said a lot of the 1980s furniture had been “clunky”, and by using new modular designs the company was able to fit more people in to the office without losing the functionality of the work station.
The furniture is also easily moved, should the company relocate to bigger premises sometime in the future.
Printing stations and photocopiers are tucked away in sections dotted around the office.
And instead of two meeting rooms there are now four, including one with state-of-the-art audiovisual technology.
The server room containing noisy computer equipment was moved from the centre of the office to a corner away from employees.
Mr Thomas said while it had cost Clough a significant amount of money to transform the floor, it was a worthwhile investment because the company had been able to grow its teams on other levels working on major projects by shifting some staff to level five.
Designers create new office culture
With most of Perth’s existing CBD office buildings hanging out the ‘no vacancy’ sign, many businesses are turning to interior designers to overhaul their existing floor space in a bid to accommodate growing employee numbers.
A recent renovation of the fifth floor at Clough’s 251 St Georges Terrace headquarters has doubled employee capacity.
Accounting firm WHK Horwath and engineer WorleyParsons have also undergone refurbishments to use space more efficiently.
Meanwhile, Iluka Resources will reduce its office space from 3.25 floors, or 3,356 square metres, to 2.25 floors, to take advantage of Perth’s tight commercial leasing market by subleasing the space it frees up.
Several office interior designers spoken to by WA Business News said the average floor space per person had fallen from about 18sq m per person five years ago to between 11 and 15sq m per person, and was continuing to fall.
But they say that, in many instances, shrinking office space per person and increasing employee numbers have not made offices too cramped or noisy.
Rather, new slim-line workstations, more efficient and open-plan designs and the elimination of redundant storage spaces are freeing up room.
The introduction of flat screen computers, for instance, means desks can be narrower while providing an unchanged amount of working area.
Some offices are doing away with the boardroom, making way for desks, with directors outsourcing meetings to private dining rooms or function rooms.
Marshall Kusinski Design Consultants design director, Kathleen Kusinski, said significantly increasing employee numbers using existing space often required a cultural shift within an organisation.
“For example, a lot of people who had an [personal] office now won’t have one,” she said.
Ms Kusinksi said many companies were doing away with executive offices.
“One of the benefits of losing the offices is that it is much more environmentally friendly, because you don’t have to air-condition individual offices, and you use fewer materials,” Ms Kusinski said. “But companies have to communicate that losing an office is not a loss of status.”
HASSELL principal Caroline Diesner said some companies compensated for an individual’s loss of an office by offering private car parking bays or providing laptops and other items that conveyed a sense of status.
“If a company is about better communication, better information, better mentoring and better access to information then offices are not what they’re cracked up to be,” she said.
Ms Diesner said that, in the past, either a drive to change or improve a company’s culture, or a physical need to increase space, had typically been the reasons why companies employed designers to redevelop an existing office.
However, those two reasons had collided in the Perth market, where both vacancy rates were low and finding enough skilled staff had become difficult.
She said many companies were also forced to undertake renovations even though they were moving into bigger premises in new buildings to open in two to three years’ time.
“But they need people on seats now, so they have to do it anyway,” Ms Diesner said.
More offices are incorporating ‘quiet rooms’, which are mini-meeting rooms that provide private space for confidential phone calls or one-on-one meetings.
These functional refits are complemented by the inclusion of plasmas in reception areas, state-of-the-art technology in boardrooms, cafes and employee hubs, which are aimed at creating better working environments for staff.
“It does help attract good candidates,” Ms Kusinksi said. “Why would you work in a dreadful office with no facilities when you can work somewhere that does and it helps you do your job faster?”
Refitting existing premises is more complicated than working in a new building, designers point out, because they have to work around an existing office, which means much of the work needs to take place after hours, increasing the time and cost of the project.
Ms Kusinski said she doubted floor space per employee would drop below 10 sqm.
Room to grow and some home comforts for staff
Creating a better work environment for its employees was the driving force behind a massive redevelopment of WHK Horwath’s St George’s Terrace offices last year, according to the accounting firm’s chief executive officer, Geoff Kidd.
However, after calling in interior designers Marshall Kusinski, WHK Horwath, formerly Grant Thornton, was able to increase the capacity of the office from a maximum of about 85 employees to about 105 people.
The business currently employs between 75 and 80 staff but the additional space provides welcome growing room for the business, Mr Kidd said.
The renovation and fit-out took about five months to finish and was completed in four stages.
Alongside a 25 per cent increase in potential staff numbers are additional meeting rooms and a ‘corporate cafe’.
It was a process Mr Kidd began about two years prior to the expiry of the company’s lease.
“We had been in these premises since 1988 and the office was getting tired and really ’80s looking,” Mr Kidd said.
“It was at the stage where you were reluctant to bring people back to the office.”
Mr Kidd said he began negotiations with the building’s landlord to be treated as a new, incoming tenant or “non-sitting tenant”.
WHK Horwath successfully argued that its landlord would more than likely need to fund an office upgrade in order to secure a new tenant, and it therefore made sense to help fund the cost of its own development in return for WHK Horwath signing a long-term lease.
The landlord ended up funding about 40 per cent of the 1,420 square metre office redevelopment.
WHK Horwath signed a new nine-year lease in August last year and the fit-out of its premises were completed in November.
The new design increased its three function rooms to five meeting rooms.
Completely new furnishing plus the new cafe, with tables and chairs for employees to take a break, have helped create a better working environment for employees.
“It is very important to be able to attract and retain staff,” Mr Kidd said.
“It is one of the biggest issues facing service organisations.”
He said he was conscious of trying to create an enjoyable environment for people to work because it provided another reason for people to stay, or join, the company.
The redevelopment of WHK Horwath included retaining its offices, although the space of each office was reduced.
Additional floor space was also freed up by reducing old storage areas and creating better, open plans in some sections of the office.
“There was a lot of junk in the middle of the office; now it is open plan and much nicer and cleaner,” Mr Kidd said.
“Where my old office was there are now two.”
Mr Kidd said new furniture had offset the impact of a reduced area size.
“It really was not a problem because of the new furniture. The eighties furniture was quite inefficient,” he told WA Business News.
The office continued to operate while the redevelopment took place, with one area of the office sectioned off behind temporary walls.
“There are more people per square metre but it looks much better,” Mr Kidd said.
“We don’t mind bringing people in now to show them around and our people aren’t going out for coffee anymore, they’re having it in the cafe.”
The office redesign came about six months before the group sold its practice to Melbourne-based WHK Group Ltd.
