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Plan&Visualize Office Design Reinvented

Office Design Reinvented: How to Increase Productivity using PlanEasy2D

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Executive Summary

Designing a plan for a brand new office and redesigning for an existing office involve different considerations and inputs. The main goal is however the same: maximize productivity and cost efficiency. A well-designed office can reap the benefits of smart,worker-oriented designs. Simple concepts applied in the design/redesign can reduce time and cost immensely. A floorplanner tool visualizes the solution for you and helps determine the best options with less effort and within a short period. This paper explains the steps involved in planning a new office and the role PlanEasy2D plays in making optimal decisions. Also discussed is a case of how a proposed rearrangement of office employees can be examined within a few minutes, again helping in crucial decision-making.

Planning a new office

When a company decides to go for a new office, it can either construct the building from scratch or think of renting a building that suits its operations. Although there is more work and time invested in the former, both require a good amount of organization and interior decoration effort. Each floor of an office building needs to be designed according to its purpose and the employees who will be working there. The functionality of the rooms influences the choices made in drawing up a suitable plan. Different types of companies need distinct layouts to fit their operations. If we take the case of a software design company that would need to accommodate 20 computer engineers in one floor along with a group leader, the arrangement would be different from the case where a newspaper publisher looks for an office to accommodate its employees.

A company building requires an assortment of space types. These can include:

Core Working Space1. Individual/joint work space for staff: Two types of organization are possible

here – open office and cubicle type2. Conference rooms

Employee/Visitor Support 1. Lobby2. Atria or Common area 3. Cafeteria or dining hall4. Physical fitness area

Operation and Maintenance 1. General Storage2. Computer Closets

After the space type, more detailed aspects of interior planning come into the picture:

• Furniture planning – deciding on the type, numbers, dimensions and placement


• Windows – In the case where the planning is for the construction of a new building, windows are important for adequate natural lighting.

• Lighting Arrangements – To supplement the natural light in the rooms, suitable artificial lights should be provided for.

• Flooring – Decisions on what type of tiles to be used for the floors and if full or partial carpeting is needed should be made.

• Heating System/Electrical Outlets on Walls – Depending on the climate of the region where the office is located, heaters may be necessary along the walls. Electrical outlets need to be placed at the appropriate points as well.

The following points ponder are useful to ponder for making decisions on the above mentioned facets of planning:

Spatial equity: Do workers have enough space to accomplish tasks? Flexibility: Can the workplace be rapidly adjusted to respond to industry-

related challenges? Comfort: Can workers adjust light, temperature, furnishings, and acoustic

levels to their preferences? Sense of place: Does the workplace decor and atmosphere mirror the

company’s brand or mission? Does the workplace create a culture appropriate to the work done there?

Company A wants to start a branch in a new city to expand its operations. An existing office building offered

for rent is identified as a potential location. One or more of its floors may be needed to house the employees and operations. To confirm its suitability and estimate space requirements, a plan needs to be drawn visualizing the office with furniture and other arrangements in place.

Requirements for the office:

• Number of Employees = 25 (20 developmental + 3 administrative + 2 sales)• Cubicle-type workplace for developmental personnel and open-type for

administrative and sales• Conference room required on one or more of the floors• Kitchen /Dining Space• Computer storage space

Using PlanEasy2D to create the plan:

Floors 2 and 3 of the building are being considered. The best solution for the company is accommodating all the employees, conference room, kitchen and computer storage room in a single floor. The dimensions and layout of the rooms in the floors are known.

Let’s start with Floor 2:


Step 1: Draw the rooms in the floor as per the layout with the appropriate dimensions. The mens/ladies restrooms for the floor are already in the plan. Here you can choose between displaying the dimensions in feet or meters according to the standard used.

Fig 1. Layout of the floor with dimensions

Step 2: The workplaces of the staff can now be added to the plan by using the suitable furniture symbols from the office library. Since the cubicle-style is preferred here for a portion of the employees, the cubicle symbol is inserted at the appropriate places in the main hall. By right-clicking, the dimensions of the cubicle can be adjusted and also rotated to the desired position. Once adjusted, furniture can be copied and pasted in the preferred location in the room. Other furniture such as book shelves and work desks can also be inserted in place.


Fig 2. Plan with cubicles addedStep 3: Deciding on other rooms – As a trial, the lower left-hand corner room is selected as the conference room and the right-hand corner room as the kitchen. Only the computer storage space remains to be allocated. With the corresponding furniture, you can get an idea of whether the space is adequate.

Step 4: Any remaining furniture items can be selected from other libraries (eg., plant,drawer,etc.) and put in place. Now, you have an exact estimate of how many staff can be accommodated in the floor and if all the requirements have been met for the other rooms.

Fig 3. Final Plan of Floor 2


As we can see, with the planned estimates of cubicle and table sizes, even with a frugal placement, Floor 2 can accommodate only 20 employees. The remaining 5 cannot be comfortably seated in the same floor. Either another arrangement including Floor 3 must be considered, or another office building where an optimal arrangement would be possible needs to be found.

These steps show you how within a span of one hour at a maximum, you can determine the suitability of the choice of floors and/or building for your new office and thus save valuable time and cost using PlanEasy2D.

New Ideas in Office Design

Architects and designers constantly reexamine the changing workplace to solve problems and accommodate needs. Some of their innovations have played better than others. Here’s the latest thinking on what works:

• For better worker retention and productivity

Executive offices on the interior, workers at the windows

Executive offices are better placed at the center of each floor. Rank-and-file workers who spend more time at their desks belong in open spaces by the windows where they can benefit more from the views and natural light.

• If your goal is spontaneous collaboration

Enclosed mini-conference rooms

When collaborative areas are scattered between clusters of cubes, the noise prevents cube-dwellers from getting work done. Instead, allocate small spaces with doors for informal meetings. Workers can quickly come together without having to leave their immediate area or reserve a conference room.

• To get a more mobile workforce

Satellite and drop-in office spaces

Employees who spend a lot of time at other sites do not need fixed-size office space. Making offices smaller allows for “touch-down” or “hotel” workspaces for visitors from other offices.

• If your goal is balancing privacy with collaboration:

Lower cube walls


Traditional cubes are too isolating, but the “open desk” system can be disturbing and directly affect the productivity of employees. Companies can simply lower cube walls from six feet to four, affording just enough privacy and plenty of visibility.

Redesigning an existing office

Redesign may be necessary for a variety of reasons – it could be existing space issues that need to be solved or simply to improve the motivation of the employees. It is important in keeping up with the current pace and face of the organization. As the company grows and changes, newer problems come up which can be tackled by innovating or reinventing the office space. Feedback from employees and customers plays a major role in the analysis.

Assess Current Space Layout and Usage -

Study whether the layout of the building is helping or hindering employees in the quest to get work done. Observing workers for a few days will reveal inefficient organization of space.

Bad signs:

• Collaborative spaces are bunched at the far end of the building• People whose jobs are highly collaborative do not naturally come into contact

with colleagues during the workday• Employees spend a lot of time in transit to meeting rooms, printers, copiers,

and fax machines

Find out how often people are using existing spaces by monitoring cubicles and conference rooms periodically.

Bad signs:

• An area is always empty• An area is overcrowded• Workers are competing for certain furnishings or equipment and not using

others

Company B has found that a long-term project with a particular customer is proceeding at a slow rate. Upon

observing the process of operations, it has found that the problem lay with the physical location of workers of three departments that needed to interact with each other many times a day. Two of the departments needed access to a laboratory that was located in another building. The solution is obvious: to reorganize them to minimize time lost in going back and forth between two buildings and also in meeting each other. But to visualize the new arrangement and confirm its viability, a plan is drawn with color-coding to indicate how employees in the project are physically distributed.


Using PlanEasy2D to create the plan:

Figure 4 shows a diagram of the buildings, B1 and B2, and the departments in the different floors:Building Floor Department(s) Number of

EmployeesB1 2 1 5

2 25 3 8

B2 Ground Laboratory

A total of 8 workers from dept. 1 and 3 require access to the lab.

Fig. 4. Building Layout

Solution:

As the laboratory cannot be moved, the proposal is to move the employees who need access to it from building B1 to B2, preferably in the ground floor of B2 where there are a few vacant spaces. The two employees from dept. 2 of B1 and remaining five employees from the other group can be accommodated in the first floor of B2, as illustrated below.

Step 1: Draw the rooms in the ground floor of B2 as per the current layout with the appropriate dimensions and work space arrangement.

Fig. 5. B2 Ground Floor Layout

Dept. 3

Dept. 1

B1 B2

LaboratoryDept. 2Floor 2

Floor 5


Step 2: Decide on the seating arrangement for the 8 employees that need access to the lab. The red squares drawn using the text box indicate that employees belonging to dept. 1 will be seated in the respective desks.

Fig.6. Layout with Color-Coding to indicate new Employee Distribution

Step 3: Draw the rooms in the first floor of B2 as per the layout similar to how the ground floor was drawn.

Fig. 7. B2 First Floor Layout

Step 4: Decide on the optimal seating arrangement for the seven employees, such that they can collaborate with each other easily.


Fig. 8. Layout with Color-Coding

In this example, we have seen how a proposed rearrangement of office employees can be confirmed and simultaneously documented with an easy color-coding scheme. In the first floor of B2, curved work desks were tried out in place of the rectangular desks corresponding to the requirements of the respective employees. Thus, flexibility to experiment with the planning is possible using PlanEasy2D.


Points to Take-Away

Designing a productive office building is a matter of using the right inputs and tools to experiment with. A software tool like PlanEasy2D that is simple to use, offers flexibility and supports a wide array of applications, can make a big difference in the way design/redesign projects are executed. The following points summarize the advantages of using PlanEasy2D:

1. Cost vs Feature: For the low investment made in the software, you get all the features needed to plan your space

2. Learn as you draw: The tool has a very small learning curve and can be used by non-CAD people

3. Real-time feedback: With real-time feedback, improvements can be immediately tried out

4. It helps both large and small-sized companies in planning their space5. Using the software you can communicate your ideas to architects and interior

designers.6. Map of your office space: Use PlanEasy2D to create a current map of the

office space and as you grow, modify and visualize new arrangements.


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