Executive summary and introduction.doc - Pockets - Distributed ...

Project Deliverable
Programme name
IST-003-1A
Sector 1.2.2.-2
Project acronym
SANE
Contract number
IST-2000-25257
Project title
Sustainable Accommodation for the New Economy
Deliverable number
Deliverable title
Deliverable version number Version 1.1
Work package WP 1
Work package contributing to deliverable WP 1
Nature of the deliverable
Report
Dissemination level
Date of delivery 15.11.02
D3
Final Space Environment Model
Public & Commission PO
Author(s)
Contributors
Assigned peer reviewer(s)
QAB reviewers
Keywords
Andrew Harrison (DEGW)
Tim Allen (DEGW), Nicola Gillen (DEGW), Jacqui Surtees (DEGW),
Felicity Swaffer (DEGW), Paul Wheeler (DEGW), Carolyn Whitehead
(DEGW), Udo-Ernst Haner (IAT), Mary Jo Crisp (RHUL), Jutta Strickner
(IAT), Helen Crosby (Arup), Jacqui Webber (Arup), Michael Willadt
(FAW), Holger Mettler (FAW), Connel Bottom (Bernard Williams
Associates), Les Hutton (editor)
John Bakke (Telenor), Udo-Ernst Haner (IAT)
Holger Mettler (FAW), Tom Fernando (Arup)
Space Environment Model, Workplace Design, Intelligent City,
Sustainability, New Economy

SANE space environment model
November 2002
D3
SANE IST 2000-25257

Contents
Acknowledgements 1
Executive summary 3
Introduction 29
The changing workplace 35
1 Sustainable workplaces in the new economy 37
Sustainability 37
New ways of working 51
The new economy 55
Towards a space environment model 111
4 The distributed workplace 113
The intelligent city 113
A distributed workplace model 118
Initial space environment model 119
5 SANE user research 125
The business context 125
Workplace strategies 126
User reactions 131
6 The space environment model 135
Knowledge work activities – the layers of what we do 136
Where we work in a technology-enabled world – the
workscape 143
Selecting appropriate workscapes 151
2 The evolution of the office 65
Basic office typologies 65
The emergence of the differentiated workplace 71
Extending the workplace 79
3 Workplace evaluation 91
Historical approaches 91
Limitations of existing approaches 100
Sustainability-grounded measures 106

A SANE strategy 167
7 Creating a distributed workplace strategy 169
Generic methodology 169
Information and telecommunications
methodology 180
Human interaction methodology 188
8 Implementing hybrid workscapes and distributed workplace
strategies 195
Organisational culture 196
Knowledge work and corporate culture 204
Workplace change management 207
9 Costing workplace strategies – an evaluative framework 219
Constructing the business case 219
Preparation of space and cost models 222
Prototype model results 234
Sustainable work environments 239
10 Design and the distributed workplace 241
Requirements of the knowledge economy 242
Quantitative building measures 247
Building innovation 249
11 The shared workplace 259
The neighbourhood or project work centre 260
The corporate centre 274
Evaluating shared workplaces 281
12 Sustainability metrics in the new workplace 289
Measures of sustainability 289
Applying measures of sustainability to the
workplace 297
Sustainability and the workplace strategy 301
Appendices
One: Glossary 311
Two: Case studies 319
Three: CSR framework 331
Four: Sustainability indicators, systems and standards 337
References 349

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Acknowledgements
The SANE research consortium consists of:
DEGW (lead consultant)
Institut Cerda
FAW
IAT University of Stuttgart
Ove Arup & Partners International
Royal Holloway, University of London
Telenor AS
SANE is a research project in the European Commission’s Fifth
Framework research programme. Within the Information Society and
Technologies section, SANE responds to Key Action II (New Methods of
Work and Electronic Commerce). It addresses II.2 (Flexible Mobile and
Remote Working Methods and Tools) as a whole, with the primary results
in II.2.1 (Sustainable Workplace Design).
We would like to acknowledge the diverse contributions of all the SANE
partners to the production of this deliverable. The earlier internal
deliverables, the outputs from the other work packages, the consortium
meetings and internal project communications throughout the project have
all contributed greatly to the development of the concepts outlined in this
document.
The objective of SANE is to enable space designers, technology
developers and other professionals concerned with the workplace to move
from a location centric to a location independent approach. SANE will
focus on the use of new internet and mobile technology services for
supporting networked communities to ensure compatible interaction styles
for local, mobile and remote work area and group members.
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Executive summary
SANE is a research project in the European Commission’s Fifth
Framework research programme. Within the Information Society and
Technologies section, SANE responds to Key Action II (New
Methods of Work and Electronic Commerce). It addresses II.2
(Flexible Mobile and Remote Working Methods and Tools) as a
whole, with the primary results in II.2.1 (Sustainable Workplace
Design).
The space environment modelling work package (WP1) focuses
on the architectural aspects of the human environment in
organisational settings. In this deliverable, D3: the final SANE
space environment model, the concepts developed within the three
theoretical workpackages of the SANE project are fused into a
conceptual model for generic methodology for describing the
implementation of a distributed workplace project.
By tightly aligning business strategy and processes with new work
place design concepts and hybrid information spaces, organisations
can deliver business advantage through improved workplace
performance, increased productivity, new distributed services and
increased information exchange. SANE defines, develops,
implements and manages a productive consulting strategy that
integrates a business strategy with the processes, knowledge and
information about work place and technological implementation into a
dynamic, efficient enterprise.
THE CHANGING WORKPLACE
During the last quarter of the twentieth century, awareness of the
principles of sustainability has become a global phenomenon. The
field of the built environment offers huge potential for abuse of the
key principles involved in sustainability and this, coupled with an
accelerated rate of change in the ways in which we work, imposes an
urgent imperative for a clear and well-informed course of action.
SUSTAINABILITY
The broadest definitions of this relatively new term all agree on one
key point: that however we use our world and its resources, we
should preserve the ability of future generations to do the same. This
concept, although long a principle of various native American and
other pre-industrial societies, first found broad expression in the
words of Thomas Jefferson:
‘Then I say the earth belongs to each … generation during its course, fully
and in its own right, no generation can contract debts greater than may be
paid during the course of its own existence’. 1
This principle was picked up in the definition set out in the 1987
Brundtland Commission 2 Report – ‘Our Common Future’, where
Sustainability is defined in terms of development 3 as follows:
1 September 6, 1789; quoted on the website of the Centre of Excellence for
Sustainable Development – (http://www.sustainable.doe.gov/overview/definitions)
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‘Sustainable development meets the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.’
on the economy and economic development as central to achieving
sustainability, seeking to overturn the conventional wisdom that
economic development can only take place at the expense of the
environment:
The Brundtland Report emphasises the need for economic
development to take place in a manner that meets the basic needs of
the world's poor, and approaches economics with a view to the
impact of human activity on the surrounding environment.
This definition established the benchmark on which all subsequent
definitions have been based. Since then definitions have embodied a
wide variety of foci, including: maintaining intergenerational welfare;
maintaining the existence of the human species; sustaining the
productivity of economic systems; maintaining biodiversity; and
maintaining evolutionary potential. 4 Most have retained the emphasis
2 The World Commission on Environment and Development was created as a
consequence of General Assembly resolution 38/161 adopted at the 38th Session
of the United Nations in autumn 1983. That resolution called upon the Secretary-
General to appoint the Chairman and Vice-Chairman of the Commission and in
turn directed them to jointly appoint the remaining members, at least half of whom
were to be selected from the developing world. The Secretary General appointed
Mrs. Gro Harlem Brundtland of Norway, then leader of the Norwegian Labour
Party, as Chairman and Dr. Mansour Khalid, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs
from Sudan, as Vice-Chairman.
‘Sustainability is the [emerging] doctrine that economic growth and
development must take place, and be maintained over time, within the limits
set by ecology in the broadest sense - by the interrelations of human beings
and their works, the biosphere and the physical and chemical laws that
govern it … It follows that environmental protection and economic
development are complementary rather than antagonistic processes.’ 5
Definitions have also sought to emphasise the need for a holistic
approach to the concept expanding the application of sustainability
beyond the realms of the economic to describe it in terms of natural
earth processes:
‘Sustainable development means improving the quality of life while living
within the carrying capacity of supporting systems’ 6 ;
‘Sustainability refers to the ability of a society, ecosystem, or any such
ongoing system to continue functioning into the indefinite future without
being forced into decline through exhaustion … of key resources’. 7
3 N.B. In the literature ‘Sustainability’ and ‘Sustainable Development’ are often used
interchangeably – sustainability implies a process, which can be referred to as
development.
4 Melinda Kane, ‘Sustainability Concepts: From Theory to Practice’, in Köhn etc
5 William D. Ruckelshaus, ‘Toward a Sustainable World’, Scientific American,
September 1989.
6 World Wide Fund for Nature, from the DETR website:
http://www.detr.gov.uk/regeneration/sustainable/guide/2.htm
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In particular the definition has been expanded to encompass three
key aspects involving the physical environment, social organisation
and economic processes:
‘'sustainable development' is development that delivers basic environmental,
social, and economic services to all residents of a community without
threatening the viability of the natural, built, and social systems upon which
the delivery of these services depends’. 8
NEW WAYS OF WORKING
Current best practice in office design has begun to embrace a variety
of architectural and construction solutions to the problem of creating
more energy efficient and environmentally comfortable office
buildings. However, there is little attempt to question the prevailing
workplace accommodation paradigm. In this paradigm – a
descendant of the planning principles formulated under the Congrés
International d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM) and espoused by
planners and architects ever since – office workers are employed in
dedicated office buildings, often remote from other urban and social
functions.
Within this paradigm there have been significant advances in terms
of creating individual buildings that are more ‘environmentally
sustainable’, in the sense that they consume less energy and
produce less waste per measure of office space created. There are
two main aspects to this: the first involves the construction process;
the second involves the building itself.
The construction process has been the focus of attempts to reduce
the amount of material and energy consumed in building erection,
through, for example: increased pre-fabrication to reduce
construction time and material waste; reduction in water
consumption; reduction in transport distances and costs; use of selffinished
materials; and recycling of construction waste. In short,
those responsible for building delivery should be driven by what
Taylor and Twinn have simply termed ‘good neighbourliness’. 9
In terms of the building, key ideas that have contributed to its
environmental sustainability include thermal mass; increased passive
ventilation or simple mechanical ventilation; passive cooling;
reduction of internal heat gains; solar control, glare control and
orientation; ease of operation; increased user interface; and the
introduction of monitoring programmes.
7 Robert Gilman, President of Context Institute, quoted on the website of the Centre of
Excellence for Sustainable Development –
(http://www.sustainable.doe.gov/overview/definitions)
Environmental sustainability, as expressed in these aspects, focuses
on the interdependence of structure, environmental services and
building fabric. It is taken to mean ecologically responsive, and
8 International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives from the DETR website:
http://www.detr.gov.uk/regeneration/sustainable/guide/2 .htm
9 Bill Taylor and Chris Twinn – ‘Sustainable Design as an Evolutionary Process’
presentation at Cool Space.
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responsible, solutions to workplace design. This approach should
result in higher quality workplaces, and therefore in increased
productivity, if one accepts that environmentally benign buildings are
usually better liked by their users. 10
In this way, to some extent, the environmentally sustainable office
building becomes part of the wider agenda embracing social and
economic sustainability, if measured in terms of user satisfaction and
productivity. However, social sustainability requires that the building
works both for its users inside, and is responsible to others into
whose broader community it fits – i.e. what does the building give
back to the city
both a challenge and an opportunity. According to a report published
by Information Society Technologies 11 , the sustainable workplace
will have positive net business benefits; positive net societal impacts
(both internally in terms of human resources and externally on wider
society); and low net environmental impact (especially through
material and energy consumption).
Rather than referring to the workplace, we should perhaps begin to
talk about ‘work systems’ or ‘work environments’. Any realistic
attempt to create sustainable office accommodation must take a
broader view than the design of individual buildings. It should be
asking some of the following questions:
True sustainability, however, embodies far more than simply the
building and its construction – it involves its incorporation into the
wider environment: the integration with local transport systems; the
opportunity for mixed use communities; the opportunity to walk to
work; and the opportunity for developments to contribute to rather
than detract from the local community. Increasingly technology will
play a part in the creation of these environments, enabling lean
construction and flexible use.
What is in fact needed is a redefinition of the term ‘workplace’. It
needs to be broadened from the narrow focus on the office building,
to incorporate the various work environments embraced by the ‘new
economy’ and ‘new ways of working’. This, of course, represents
10 Rab Bennetts – ‘Evolution and Significant Linkages over Two Decades’;
presentation at Cool Space.
• What is a more sustainable way of work, of operating an
economy
• What is the nature of the sustainable working environment
• How should we house office workers – in dedicated buildings or
elsewhere
• Where should these working environments be located
• How should people move and communicate between working
environments, and between these and other environments
• What elements should be incorporated into the sustainable
working environment, both to increase productivity and efficiency,
and to reduce consumption
What seems to be common to all definitions of sustainability is a
concern that we preserve for future generations similar opportunities,
11 Information Society Technologies – Sustainable Workplaces in a Global Information
Society
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in terms of quality of life and the potential to exploit the world’s
resources, to those we enjoy today. Most of the literature places the
emphasis on economic development, crucially seeing this as
complementary, rather than in opposition, to environmental
preservation. But any approach to the sustainability agenda must be
holistic, embracing all its various aspects. The usual divisions into
environmental, economic and social sustainability falsely attempt to
represent mutually indivisible areas of concern. Achieving
sustainability should be seen as a dynamic process, rather than an
end in itself. It should be seen as an attitude, rather than a definable
set of goals. If human society and the earth are seen as a single
system, then the single most important factor will be the capacity of
this system to absorb change and to evolve. Diversity is a key factor
in safeguarding this potential.
There are several broad themes that emerge among the various
strategies for tackling the sustainability agenda. Principle among
these is the inefficiency of the existing market frameworks, and the
need for an adjustment both of these and of the driving economic
trend of consumption. Rather than valuing products, we should be
valuing ideas and human capital. Technological progress is seen as
offering positive benefits through economic growth and
dematerialisation of products and processes.
This brings with it the so-called ‘rebound effect’, in which such
progress tends to have benefit at the micro level, but at the macro
scale to be negative. Technological progress will therefore only be of
lasting benefit within appropriate social and economic frameworks,
governing the directions it takes. New global societal structures are
needed, creating a culture of, and framework for, mutual global
responsibility. The city emerges as the key site for achieving this end,
due to its position as the site of advanced social and economic
interaction.
In terms of the workplace, much useful work has been done towards
the creation of more environmentally sustainable offices, but the
principle requirement in achieving sustainability here will be a
redefinition of the workplace, and a re-evaluation of its requirements
and constituent parts.
WORKPLACE EVALUATION
Any method of evaluation will reflect current concerns and ways of
thinking about ‘the workplace’ among organisations and in the wider
society – and the ideas underlying past and current ways of
evaluation may provide insights into the changing views of what
constitutes a workplace and how it might fit into the broader social
context. In the context of the SANE project, an assessment of
evaluation techniques is invaluable because such techniques
themselves can change the way society thinks about what is being
measured. It is hoped that a discussion within the SANE project of
the kinds of workplace measures that ought to be developed might
contribute to advancing thought within the business and
organisational community about what workplaces are, could and
should be, and enable the countries of the European Union to be at
the forefront in using ‘workplaces’ (in the broadest possible meaning)
to promote economic, social and environmental well-being.
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The history of workplace evaluation is closely linked with the history
of workplace design. Broadly speaking, offices prior to the 1960s and
1970s were based on ideas borrowed from industry, such as the
model of the production line as first implemented in Ford’s car plants
early in the twentieth century. This involved the ‘division of labour’:
the breaking down of complex tasks into a number of simple subtasks.
Work moves between individuals each repeating a single,
specialised sub-task (rather than the alternative approach of one
individual seeing an entire process through from start to finish,
carrying out all the sub-tasks involved). Thus, the key features of the
Fordist approach to workplace design are the division of labour and
an emphasis on the efficient flow of work.
Ford’s approach owed much to the ‘scientific management’ ideas
developed in the late nineteenth century by F.W. Taylor. Taylor’s
basic assumption was that an empirical, scientific approach to the
study of work would yield benefits in terms of productivity; he
believed that by measuring how people carry out a task, ways of
making the process faster or better would become evident, and that
this focus on increasing the efficiency of the individual task would
improve the overall, large-scale process.
In keeping with the Taylorist approach, the workplace evaluation
measures prevalent during the first six decades of the twentieth
century adopted an overtly scientific approach, investigating one
factor at a time using the classic experimental method 12 .
12 Within the experimental method a single factor of interest is systematically varied
by the experimenter, while all other conditions are held constant, and the effect on
some output of interest is measured.
During the 1970s and 1980s, the expanding economy and general
business climate laid even greater emphasis on efficiency as the
post-war boom ended. At the same time, the increasing focus on
quantitative approaches in many social sciences led to renewed
interest in workplace evaluation, and the development of the
discipline of environmental psychology gave a fresh impetus to the
idea of measuring the effects of the workplace. During these
decades, an increasing number of studies were undertaken with the
aim of investigating the efficiency of workplaces.
A worldwide recession in the late 1980s had a profound effect on
European business. Companies cut staff drastically (downsizing) and
this meant that they had surplus space available. This offered
another opportunity for cost savings, as companies rid themselves of
surplus buildings. This sometimes involved rationalisation of the use
of their remaining buildings, and continuing concern with how
efficiently they were using the space they retained.
This recession was the high-water mark for the focus on ‘efficiency’
in workplace measures. As companies came out of the recession
‘leaner and meaner’, organisations began to realise that an emphasis
on ‘efficiency’ in the workplace was not necessarily enough; indeed,
it might be pushing the organisation in the opposite direction to that
of better profits and more effective operations as a whole. The
intense focus on efficiency and cost saving had been, for many
organisations, counter-productive. There was an increasing
recognition of the importance to the organisation of the knowledge
about it which staff carried in their heads. Thus, the focus on
efficiency had been masking the need to focus on some broader
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measure of the contribution of people’s work to the organisation as a
whole. Duffy (1997) sums up this distinction succinctly: from
concentrating on efficiency – ‘doing things right’, the focus switched
to effectiveness – ‘doing the right thing’, adding value to the
enterprise.
What exactly do we mean by ‘effectiveness’ Duffy (1997) describes
it as a focus on:
• increasing value
• using space to its full potential
• having the right range of work settings to match the different
types of work carried out
• making the most of people.
This focus on effectiveness reflects many changes in organisational
style and priorities over the last decade or so. There has been a
huge increase in the importance of horizontal interaction across
organisational divisions, so that the value of interaction among staff
members is now recognised much more clearly
Also, as Duffy (1997) points out, occupancy costs are a relatively
small proportion of the overall costs of employing someone. Focusing
simply on occupancy costs is unlikely to yield significant cost savings
and these may easily be outweighed by additional staff costs as key
employees lose motivation or even leave the organisation. A focus
on how ‘efficient’ the workspace is will not offer the best ‘leverage’ for
an organisation – it is the wrong place on which to focus attention
and to carry out cost-cutting exercises. It became clear that the focus
should be on helping staff to work as effectively as possible.
Given this change of focus towards looking at the productivity of the
organisation as a whole in its widest sense, rather than space
efficiency, a different set of factors become important, and thus, a
different set of workplace evaluation tools are needed. However, it is
much more difficult to measure the ‘effectiveness’ of an organisation
than to measure the ‘efficiency’ of office space.
Contemporary management thinking departs substantially from the
rigours of prescribed tasks and hierarchically -driven work processes,
relying instead on highly-motivated individuals who are enabled by
technology to have a high degree of autonomy and use face-to-face
interaction to increase the richness of their business transactions.
The kind of workplace that truly supports this kind of business
environment is very different from the more traditional approach to
office design discussed earlier. The office thus becomes a place for
stimulating intellect and creativity. The focus moves towards enabling
the knowledge worker to perform at their best.
The history of workplace evaluation can then be summarised as
moving from a focus on efficiency to a focus on effectiveness. This
shift has taken place at the same time as a number of other changes
in office work, with the general aim of giving more autonomy to
knowledge workers and to increase the interaction between them. A
report published by the UK-based Industrial Society 13 identifies these
13 Nathan & Doyle 2002
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changes more specifically, and their effect on the design and layout
of offices:
• The rise in prevalence of ‘nomadic workers’ (who have multiple
workspaces, including some outside the office).
• Increasing flexibility of people’s workstyles when working within
the office (people move from setting to setting as appropriate,
often having no fixed workspace that ‘belongs’ to them; furniture
is mobile and spaces are reconfigured for group and individual
working; working hours are varied).
• The office is being reconfigured as a forum for ideas exchange,
community space, team space, and a drop-in place for mobile
workers – as well as a catalyst for wider cultural and
organisational change.
If the focus on efficiency was too narrow, concentrating attention on
short-term savings in space costs rather than the long-term benefits
of a more effective organisation, is the more recent focus on
effectiveness the final answer to the question of where organisations
should focus their attention regarding the space they provide for their
office staff Is the focus on effectiveness itself limiting in any way,
and are there any other factors that we should be considering when
looking at sustainable accommodation for organisations in the new
economy
The limitations of the effectiveness approach can best be borne out
by a consideration of three factors:
• the tools currently used to evaluate effectiveness
• the success or otherwise of workspaces designed around the
concept of effectiveness, generally termed ‘new ways of working’
• the current environmental, social, cultural and economic climate
within which organisations operate.
There is no clear, categorical break between the idea that
workplaces should be considered in terms of effectiveness (‘doing
the right things’) and the ideas of workplace sustainability. The latter
is merely going further, making more explicit, and thinking longerterm
into the future about the goals that were implicit in the concept
of the ‘effective workplace’. To be effective in the longer term,
workplaces must contribute to the health and well-being not only of
the organisation but of its staff, its business colleagues (clients,
suppliers and business partners) and the wider economic and social
environment.
Two currently-accepted though relatively new approaches to
measurement, Corporate Social Responsibility and Triple Bottom
Line Accounting, begin to address issues of sustainability. Corporate
Social Responsibility (CSR) represents those activities that are
focused on creating and sustaining social, human and environmental
capital within the context of an organisation’s economic activities.
CSR reflects the increasing requirement by society that companies
actively engage with employees and the communities in which they
operate by going beyond regulatory compliance. Triple Bottom Line
Accounting (TBLA) is the practice of accounting for those impacts on
the social and natural environment that are incurred as a result of
economic activities undertaken by a company. By measuring and
reporting on activities that are undertaken, a company formalises
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their commitment to instituting action plans that support stated
policies, and are able to convey this commitment to stakeholders in a
verifiable manner.
In order to adopt this more holistic perspective – the perspective of
an organism/organisation in an ecological niche within a wider
environment, where the organism and environment are mutually
sustaining – we must develop a space environment model applicable
to an increasingly complex and disaggregated workscape.
TOWARDS A SPACE ENVIRONMENT MODEL
The 1990s has seen a revolution in the way that space and time are
used in leading organisations. New ways of working have allowed
many organisations to integrate the physical work environment into
the business process, to increase density of occupation within office
buildings while at the same time creating effective work environments
that encourage interaction and communications.
The next decade will see even greater challenges: both at the level of
the individual trying to use the scarce resource of time more
effectively and at the level of the organisation trying to manage a
dispersed workforce while creating the spirit and teamwork
necessary for organisations to continue to generate new ideas and
thrive. Increasingly organisations will move outside of the physical
container of their own buildings into larger organisational networks
across cities, countries, the region or the world.
Once again information technology has played an essential role in
the transformation, allowing forward thinking organisations to
integrate a wider range of urban work settings into their corporate
workspace. The need for building or space ownership becomes less
significant as space is purchased on demand, on an hourly, daily, or
monthly basis or as non owned spaces such as hotels, airport
lounges and clubs become a standard part of the working week. The
city is the office.
With distributed workforces only accessing buildings periodically the
role of buildings is shifting dramatically. Work can take place
anywhere so why should someone come to the office The office is
seen as an opportunity to express the culture and reinforce the
values and beliefs of an organisation. The physical work environment
and the opportunities it provides for interaction and collaboration aid
knowledge transfer and communication and will form the
infrastructure for learning organisations.
In 2000, DEGW developed a distributed workplace model - the basis
for much of the SANE research and the predecessor of the eventual
SANE space environment model. This model attempted to
incorporate the increasing congruence between physical and virtual
work environments, acknowledging the impact that information and
communications technologies have had on the work process of most
individuals and organisations.
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THE DISTRIBUTED WORKPLACE
The distributed workplace model developed by DEGW assumes
radical changes in both the supply and demand sides of the building
procurement model. On the supply side of the equation developers
will increasingly realise that increased profits will result from thinking
of buildings more in terms of the opportunity to deliver high value
added services on a global basis to a customer base rather than as a
simple passive investment vehicle.
From the users’ perspective there is increasing interest in the
provision of global solutions that provide flexibility and break down
the old barriers between real estate provisions, building operation
and the provision of business services.
The role that buildings are playing in many organisations is also
changing. Historically buildings have often provided a way of
demonstrating organisational wealth, power and stability. The solid
19 th century bank and insurance headquarters buildings in the UK
and the 20 th century drive for taller and taller office buildings, often in
the absence of a sound financial or real estate case for them, are
both demonstrations of this.
With distributed workforces only accessing buildings periodically the
role of buildings is shifting dramatically. Work can take place
anywhere so why should some-one come to the office The office is
seen as an opportunity to express the culture and reinforce the
values and beliefs of an organisation.
The distributed workplace model also incorporates the increasing
congruence between physical and virtual work environments,
acknowledging the impact that information and communications
technologies have had on the work process of most individuals and
organisations. The model also examines the continuum between
public and private space and produce novel solutions to their
integration into work places. The workplace is divided into three
conceptual categories according to the degree of privacy and
accessibility they offer. The three categories of place used in the
model are “public”, “privileged” and “private”.
Each of these ‘places’ is composed of a number of different types of
work settings, the relative proportion of each forming the character of
the space. Public space is predominately suited for informal
interaction and touchdown working for relatively short periods of time.
Privileged space supports collaborative project team and meeting
spaces as well as providing space for concentrated individual work.
Private space also contains both individual and collaborative work
settings but with a greater emphasis on privacy and confidentiality,
with defined space boundaries and security.
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Knowledge systems
e.g. VPN,
corporate intranet
Extranet sites
Knowledge communities
e.g. collaborative virtual
environments, project
extranets, video conference
Internet sites
e.g. information
sources,
chat rooms,
©DEGW 2001
Virtual
Physical
Private
• Protected access
• Individual or collaborative workspace
Privileged
• Invited access
• Collaborative project and meeting space
Public
•Open access
•Informal interaction and workspace
e.g. serviced offices,
incubator space,
home working
e.g. clubs,
airport
lounges,
e.g. cafes,
hotel lobbies,
airport terminals
Filters or
boundaries
Filters or
boundaries
is restricted to members of the organisation and the value of the
organisation is related to the contents of this virtual space – the
customer databases, the descriptions of processes and project
histories.
When designing accommodation strategies organisations will
increasingly need to consider how the virtual work environments will
be able to support distributed physical environments and how the
virtual environments can contribute to the development of
organisational culture and a sense of community when the staff
spend little or no time in ‘owned’ facilities.
FIGURE I. SPACE ENVIRONMENT MODEL - HYBRID WORKSCAPES
Each of the physical work environments has a parallel virtual
environment that shares some of the same characteristics. The
virtual equivalent of the public workplace is the internet where
access is open to all and behaviour is relatively ‘unmanaged’. The
equivalents of the privileged workplace are extranets where
communities of interest use the internet to communicate and as an
information resource membership.
There are restrictions to entry into a knowledge community (such as
registration or membership by invitation only) and membership has
obligations and responsibilities attached, perhaps in terms of
contributing material or communicating with other members. The
virtual equivalents of the private workplace are intranets, the private
knowledge systems belonging to an individual organisation that
contain the organisation’s intellectual property. Access to the Intranet
An organisation could choose to locate the Public, Privileged and
Private workplaces within a single building and location. In many
ways the rich mix of work settings provided in New Ways of Working
implementations could be said to already do this. In the diagram
below this type of combined work environment is referred to as
‘‘Office is the City’. All workspace is owned by the organisation and
is occupied solely by then. Zoning within the building is often used to
reinforce culture and community and urban metaphors such as
‘neighbourhood’, ‘village’ and ‘street’ may be used to describe these
zones.
SANE IST 2000-25257 13

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Owned space
Shared space
©DEGW 2001
‘Office is the city’
Single location,
owned space
Private
Privileged
Public
Dispersed
organization
Multiple locations,
owned space
Private
Privileged
Public
Figurehead
organization
Multiple locations,
owned & shared spaces
Private
Multiple locations
‘Owned’ spaces ‘Owned’ and public
spaces
Owned spaces for all Owned spaces
activities
Public
for core activities
Use of city locationsUse of city spaces
to reinforce culture and and facilities for
community
Privileged
‘City is the office’
Multiple locations,
shared spaces
•
Private
•
Privileged
Public
Increased use of distributed,shared workplaces
Move from fixed to variable costs
FIGURE 2. PROPERTY STRATEGIES FOR DISPERSED ORGANISATIONS
As the level of remote working increases in an organisation it may
not be desirable to house all types of workplace in the same location.
Distributing workplaces around the city may allow staff to reduce the
amount of commuting they need to do and allow the organisation to
start using the attributes of the city to reinforce organisational culture
and community. For example an organisation that wants to be
thought of as innovative and trendy could choose to locate drop-in
work centres in downtown retail/ leisure area such as Soho in
London or Chelsea in New York while the bulk of their workplace
could be in more traditional business locations. In the diagram above
this property strategy is described as ‘dispersed.’
Organisations are increasingly incorporating semi-public spaces such
as hotels, serviced office centres, airport lounges and cafes into their
work environments. It is possible that this trend will continue to the
point where the only spaces actually owned by the organisation are
the Private Workplaces including such things as Headquarters
Buildings, Training and IT Centres. All other space could be provided
by outside organisations on a flexible, ‘as used’ basis as well as
many of the business support services. This type of real-estate
strategy is described as ‘figurehead’ in the property strategy
diagram above.
If this move away from owned organisational space is taken to its
extreme it is possible to envisage a completely virtual organisation
where virtual work environments are used to house the
organisation’s knowledge and information resources and all physical
work takes place in either individually owned space (for example,
staff working at home) or in shared work environments booked on an
‘as-needed’ basis. In the diagram above this is described as ‘City is
the Office.’ If this strategy is adopted by an organisation issues
relatively to training and knowledge transfer, use of ICT to support
the work process, management of distributed work teams and
informal interaction and team building will need to be carefully
thought through.
14 SANE IST-2000-25257

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The introduction of a distributed workplace model potentially has both
efficiency and effectiveness benefits that can work at the level of the
individual, the organisation and the City. The distributed workplace
model suggests that workspace in the future will be broken down into
smaller units distributed across the city, including both suburban
(close to home) and urban (close to clients) space.
Smaller units of space can more easily be incorporated into the
existing city fabric and, when combined with new methods of
delivering both voice and data c ommunications, these smaller units
may be accommodated within old or previously obsolete buildings in
downtown areas. Opportunities are therefore provided for
regenerating existing city districts to provide homes for New
Economy companies.
The re-use of buildings contributes to sustainability in terms of
avoiding the construction of new buildings (materials and energy)
and in the maintenance and support of existing communities.
Remote working, whether at home or at neighbourhood work centres
(café/ club type space) aids sustainability by improving the quality of
life for individuals (reduced commuting time) and by the reduction of
energy consumption.
The increased use of shared space has economic implications for the
organisations concerned. Buying space on an ‘as needed’ basis
rather than by committing to long term leases allows organisations to
move from a fixed cost structure to a more variable, freeing up capital
to be invested in developing the business rather than just housing the
existing business.
As well as providing re-use and regeneration opportunities across the
whole city a distributed work strategy also offers opportunities to
specific cultural and historic facilities and areas that can attract
organisations who want to use these cultural facilities to reinforce
their organisational culture in the absence of their own buildings.
At the level of the individual, distributed working allows more control
over the use of time, with reduced commuting and an ability to match
the work environment to the tasks required: to use visits to the office
to meet with colleagues and work with project teams and use a range
of other locations for concentrated individual work, away from
interruptions and distractions.
Sharing workspace with other organisations also provides
opportunities for interaction with people from other professions which
may lead to the development of new business ideas or projects as
well as opportunities for career development and networking.
THE SPACE ENVIRONMENT MODEL
The SANE space environment model looks beyond the idea that
technology is a mere supplement to physical space. The model can
be used at various stages of the briefing process: to help
organisations, which provide space in order to support their goals, to
develop strategies for the nature and use of that space; it will assist
those who develop space, in their goal of producing relevant design
solutions; and it will provide the knowledge workers who use the
space with a means of defining and describing the best range of
options and protocols for them and their working practices.
SANE IST 2000-25257 15

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
In the face of rapidly developing technology and work practices, it is
also necessary to move beyond the idea that the best approach to
gaining a comprehensive understanding of, or the best way of
providing, appropriate environments for knowledge work is via the
identification of a definitive list of work settings and work activities,
and a direct matching of items from the former list with those from the
latter.
A more useful approach is the identification of and careful
consideration of the core contextual variables which may
characterise, or impact on, any given activity within an organisational
context; these mediating variables should inform decisions about the
types of work environments and supporting technology which will
best support those activities.
Equally, when thinking about work settings, whether physical or
virtual, it is necessary to consider the places and environments which
set the context. The term ‘workscape’ is used to describe the
complete ‘place-with-technology’ environment. Workscapes vary
along certain characteristics and it is through the matching of the
mediating factors of activities in their wider business milieu with the
characteristics of the range of available workscapes that an
organisation can ensure that it is providing the right mix of
environments.
When deciding on the most appropriate workscape – including both
real and virtual ‘places’ – in which to carry out a work activity, four
different kinds of factors must be taken into account.
First, there is the nature of the activity itself – for example, does it
require a place where one can concentrate, does it require the
participation of other people, is this particular document or
conversation confidential Obviously, these may in part derive from
the nature of the task or business process to which this activity
contributes.
Second, there is the wider context of the other activities that the
person is carrying out during the same time period, which will
influence the location chosen for the activity.
Third, there are the preferences (both enduring and temporary) and
goals of the individual (for example, do they prefer a particular type of
workscape, do they need to be near the child minder’s house today,
do they generally want to minimise commuting).
Fourth, there is the background context of the organisational goals,
values and culture; for example, does the organisation place a high
value on team-working or, conversely, is the culture one of collegiate
working of autonomous individuals
These four kinds of factors collectively are here termed ‘mediating
factors of the activity’. The identification of the key mediating factors
for a particular activity will enable informed decisions to be made as
to the most appropriate workscape for an activity, these decisions
taking into account wider organisational factors such as the goals
and values of the organisation, the relative importance to the
organisation of the task of which this activity forms a part, and the
demands of other tasks.
16 SANE IST-2000-25257

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The physical landscape of work can be described in three parts –
work settings, work arenas, work environments, each is defined in
scale and context in relation to the others. A work setting (such as
‘an L-shaped desk and chair’ or ‘a sofa’) cannot be judged without
taking into account its surrounding context - the particular work arena
(the collection of work settings which make up a coherent ‘place’ both
physically and psychologically) in which the setting is located.
However, the distributed workplace model describes work taking
place beyond, and no longer constrained by, the context of the
traditional office. Therefore, not only the work arena but also, the
context of the wider work environment must also be taken into
account.
Developments in information technology have enabled activities that
would normally take place in a single physical place to be conducted
when one or more of the participants are in different locations. Thus,
virtual or hybrid work settings must also be included in an
understanding of the workscape.
The immediate environment that the body interacts with can be
described as a work setting. It is the smallest unit of analysis of an
overall working environment to which some ‘use-meaning’ still
applies. It should be noted, however, that work settings comprise a
number of components, such as a desk, a chair, a full height
partition, a medium-height screen, and so on. These are termed
‘work setting elements’.
Virtual work settings are described as any non-physical ‘space’
which can be used to facilitate work. A factor shared by most virtual
environments is that they are in some way designed to facilitate
communication and/or collaborative work. (The desktop of a
computer not connected to a network is one of the few examples of a
virtual work setting oriented wholly towards individual work.)
Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVE) can be as basic as e-mail,
a text-based asynchronous form of communication, and as complex
as a Virtual Reality space with ‘walking, talking’ 3-D representations
of the participants.
A work arena is a collection of one or more work settings that forms
somewhere with the psychological status of a ‘place’ – that is, it has
some meaning associated with it which would be largely shared by
everyone within the culture or society using that arena.
Work environments are the highest level of the physical
environment which needs to be taken into account in this analysis.
Examples include an office building, an airport departure terminal, a
train, a city street. It should be noted that the same kind of work
arena can exist in more than one type of work environment, and this
will alter its nature. For example, a business lounge might be within a
private office building, or might be a privileged space in an airport. A
cafe might be a public space within a city street, or might be a within
a private office building. Conversely, work environments will often
contain a variety of work arenas - an airport, for example, contains
café areas as well as business lounges.
The combination of virtual and real work settings within a work arena,
located in a work environment is described as ‘the workscape’. The
decision to use a physical or virtual setting to support an activity will
SANE IST 2000-25257 17

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
depend on the mediating variables of the activity. For example,
physical places can often reduce the effectiveness of an activity, for
example, due to their remoteness (causing lengthy and difficult
journeys that leave limited time and energy for working) or their lack
of privacy. However, the absence of the physical presence of the
other person when working in a virtual setting might diminish the
success of that activity, depending upon the activity’s mediating
factors. Being able to establish the right kind of work environment for
the activity is paramount.
WORK SETTING ELEMENT
Desk
Table
Chair
Filing cabinet
Plant
Power
Wall
Partition
Task light
Down light
Telephone
Computer
Network connection
Whiteboard
Data projector
Printer
Photocopier
WORK SETTING
physical
L-SHAPED DESK & CHAIR
SMALL TABLE/FOR 3-4
LARGE TABLE/FOR 6-8
SOFA
QUIET BOOTH
BROWSERY
SEAT
virtual
VIDEO CONFERENCE
INSTANT MESSAGING
SHARED VISUALISATION
CHAT ROOM
e-WHITEBOARD
e-MAIL
VR WORLD/ AVATAR
TEXT MESSAGE
VOICEMAIL
WORK ARENA
TEAM/PROJECT AREA
BUSINESS LOUNGE
CLUB
CAFÉ
PICNIC AREA
MEETING ROOM
MEETING AREA
INDIVIDUAL OFFICE
WORK ENVIRONMENT
ORGANISATION OFFICE
SERVICED OFFICE
BUSINESS CENTRE
AIRPORT
RAILWAY STATION
STREET/CITY
PARK
TRANSPORTATION
(TRAIN, PLANE, CAR)
HOME
In the same way that the particular mediating factors of activities can
be identified, workscapes can be seen to vary across certain
dimensions or characteristics that can then be used to define their
suitability for particular activities. These dimensions or include the
following:
• Accessibility to people –the knowledge community
• Accessibility to information/data
• Ability to control boundaries (control access of others to oneself)
• Ability to support group or collaborative work
• Ability to control confidentiality
• Degree of ‘presence’ available
The approach suggested in this document is to match sets of
mediating factors relating to the activity in question with sets of
characteristics of the possible workscapes, to find the most
appropriate match. This process is illustrated in figure 4 below– in
essence, the SANE space environment model in its final form.
WORKSCAPE
FIGURE 3. STRUCTURE OF THE WORKSCAPE AND SOME EXAMPLES OF
COMPONENTS
18 SANE IST-2000-25257

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
organisational
context
business process
and task
activity
mediating
factors
WORK SETTING ELEMENT WORK SETTING
WORK ARENA
physical
Desk
Table
L-SHAPED DESK & CHAIR
TEAM/PROJECT AREA
Chair
SMALL TABLE/FOR 3-4
LARGE TABLE/FOR 6-8
Filing cabinet
BUSINESS LOUNGE
SOFA
Plant
QUIET BOOTH
Power
CLUB
BROWSERY
Wall
SEAT
Partition
CAFÉ
Task light
Down light
Telephone
Computer
Network connection
Whiteboard
Data projector
Printer
Photocopier
virtual
VIDEO CONFERENCE
INSTANT MESSAGING
SHARED VISUALISATION
CHAT ROOM
e-WHITEBOARD
e-MAIL
VR WORLD/ AVATAR
TEXT MESSAGE
VOICEMAIL
PICNIC AREA
MEETING ROOM
MEETING AREA
INDIVIDUAL OFFICE
WORKSCAPE
characteristics
of workscapes
WORK ENVIRONMENT
ORGANISATION OFFICE
SERVICED OFFICE
BUSINESS CENTRE
AIRPORT
RAILWAY STATION
STREET/CITY
PARK
TRANSPORTATION
(TRAIN, PLANE, CAR)
HOME
offices) should house, in terms of the range of physical work settings,
the work arenas these settings are formed into, and the work
environments in which these work arenas are situated, based on the
business processes that will be carried out there. They could also
identify at a generic level the technical infrastructure and hardware
which is needed to provide the virtual settings which would be
available within these physical locations. In parallel with this, they
could develop a strategy for how and where their staff should work
(including, but not limited to, a homeworking policy), and identify the
preferred geographical distribution of the workscapes their staff will
use.
©DEGW 2002
FIGURE 4. MOVING FROM ACTIVITIES TO WORKSCAPES
In summary, the choice of workscape should be based on a
consideration not just of the immediate activity a knowledge worker is
carrying out, plus the individual knowledge worker’s personal
preferences, but also on the wider organisational context, the
objectives of the team, the values and goals of the organisation and
the well-being of the wider society.
The ideas discussed here can be applied in two different sets of
circumstances. First, they can be used to aid organisational-level
decisions about property strategy. Property professionals within an
organisation could use the approach described here to determine
what their office buildings (whether owned, leased or serviced
It is envisaged that this would be carried out in a workshop context,
with a team from the organisation using the contextual factors and
workscape characteristics as a tool for analysing the way their own
organisation functions and could function. Such a process could
bring to light particular factors or characteristics of importance which
may not be listed here; in particular, it will clarify exactly which
business context factors are of importance to the organisation in
question.
In a similar way, providers of office space could use the ideas to help
develop briefs for the accommodation they will provide in the future.
The second level at which these ideas can be applied is at the point
of individual and team decision-making about where and how to work
on a specific activity and task or set of current activities and tasks. It
is envisaged that initially, teams would use a workshop to develop
guidelines for what workscapes they would use for which activities,
SANE IST 2000-25257 19

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
taking into account relevant contextual factors. Subsequent to that,
individuals and groups should have little trouble in identifying which
workscapes to use for their various activities; indeed, the
predictability of this is seen as very important in allowing teams to
carry out their work smoothly and in a co-ordinated fashion whilst still
allowing them individual autonomy – distributed working must not
appear to any of the staff whom it affects as either unpredictable or
uncontrolled. The question of autonomy and control is crucial within
knowledge work, for the individual, the organisation and the wider
society.
A SANE STRATEGY
Using the concepts described previously it is possible to construct a
methodology for creating and implementing a distributed workplace
strategy (summarised in figure 5). This will require the active
participation of a multi-disciplinary team drawn from within the
organisation and external consultants. The exact composition of the
team will depend on factors such as the skills within each
organisation, timescales and resource availability. It should be noted
that the consultancy process described in this document relates to
the development of a workplace strategy and the implementation of
this strategy may simply result in better use of existing resources or
the introduction of new ICT tools, changes in work process or the
intgration of sustainability issues into general process rather than the
construction of new buildings or facilities which is the traditional ‘end
result’ of workplace projects.
At each stage it is necessary to consider sustainability, ICT and
human communications issues as well as the issues that are more
typically part of a workplace implementation project.
The implementation of a distributed working strategy will require
careful planning involving all areas of the business. Critical issues to
be considered include:
• Costs and benefits of implementing the strategy (real estate
savings, investment costs in IT and provision of business
services)
• Risks to business delivery
• HR policies on remote working
• Provision of training
• Corporate branding
• Maintenance of community and culture
• Knowledge management
• Management of teams and individuals
• Confidentiality
• Client perceptions
• Provision of business services
20 SANE IST-2000-25257

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Defining the business
context
Focus on:
Business
context
Business
process
Work styles
Developing the strategy
Workscapes
Workplace
strategy
Implementing the strategy
Implementation
& operation
Workplace evaluation
& improvement
Goals
• Understanding the
business
• Defining project
goals and vision
• Identifying project
KPIs
Define the current
and desired future
business processes
Understand how
people work now
and aspirations for
the future
Determine the range of
workscapes needed to
support the work
process: organizational
and individual
requirements
Define appropriate
distributed
workplace solution
• owned space
• shared space
• home working
• mobile working
• Develop the
workplace design
• Selecting the actual
shared componets
• Implementing the
workplace strategy
• Evaluate
performance on KPIs
• Inform strategy of
next project or refine
current project
Examples of appropriate tools and methods
• Interviews with Senior
Managers
• New Economy
Envisioning
• Review of business
plan
• Sustainability audit
(TBL)
• Interviews with business
stream leaders
• Review of business plan
• Review of real estate
portfolio
• Briefing cards
• Time Utilization Survey
• Workplace Performance
Survey
• Plan Analysis
• Work process mapping
• Jigsaw tool
• Technology requirements
audit
• Focus groups
• Workshops with client team
• Focus groups with users to
discuss proposed
workscapes
• Pilot implementations of
workscapes
• Computer simulations/
visualisations
• Structured building visits
• Technology trials
• Worklife survey
• Analysis of demographic
and location information
• Sustainability audit
• Staff focus groups
• Cost benefit analysis
• Workshops with user
representatives (project
progress)
• Workplace change
management programme
(preparing for the new
workplace strategy
• Sustainability audit
• Workplace Performance
Surveys
• Time Utilization Surveys
• Performance reviews of
shared workplaces
• User workshops
• Interviews
• Evaluation of workplace
costs
• Sustainability audit
Outputs
• Initial description of
business needs
• Agreement of project
success criteria
© DEGW 2002
• Current and future
projected headcount
and space
requirements
• Key relationships
between and within
business units
• Description of
business process
• Understanding of
performance of current
workplaces
• Description of work
activities and activity
context
• Description of current
and likely future
technology
requirements
• Production of strategic
brief
• Description of
proposed workscapes
including physical
work settings and
technology
requirements
• Analysis of workforce
demographics and
location requirements
• Detailed description of
proposed strategy
• - location
• - size, capacity, cost,
quality of owned and
shared components
• - Understanding of IT
and service
implications
• - Identification of
workplace partners
•Production of detailed project
briefs
- aim of the design
- site location and planning
issues
- dimensions of spaces and
elements to be provided
- cost plan
•performance specification for
environmental systems
•maintenance proposals
•Key milestones and targets
•Negotiation of contracts for
shared workplaces and
service partners
• Assessment of
building and workplace
performance
• Feedback of lessons
learned to inform
future projects
FIGURE 5: DISTRIBUTED WORKPLACE GENERIC PROJECT FLOW CHART.
SANE IST 2000-25257 21

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The widespread adoption of distributed working strategies is likely to result
in a fundamental shake-up of the property procurement chain and major
new players are likely to emerge who are able to combine expertise in
workplace design, hotel management and service provision and IT
delivery. Consultants will also find it necessary to cross traditional
boundaries to provide integrated advice and strategies that address the
issues listed above.
An important step in the implementation process described is the
development of a change management strategy for the project, to oversee
the social and cultural change process as the organisation moves from an
‘old way of working’ to a new way of working’ or at the very least from an
old environment to a new environment.
Until recently these strategies focused on assisting organisations to deal
with change relating to the physical environment and new working patterns
resulting from it. Now as organisations seek to implement hybrid working
environments the combined impacts of space, technology and social
organisational changes have to be considered .
Social and cultural factors will strongly influence the ability of organisations
and individuals to successfully implement hybrid workscapes and
distributed workplace strategies and will influence the workscapes and
strategies chosen. It is essential therefore that we can analyse and
understand organisational culture.
The economic implications of a distributed workplace strategy will also
need to be carefully assessed to determine the viability of the strategy. As
part of the development of the SANE distributed workplace strategy a
prototype business case model was developed to test an evaluative
framework. It is clear that all organisations are different and a distributed
workplace strategy that works for one will not work for another. For this
reason the prototype model was set up using a set of generic assumptions
about the mix of distributed workplaces an organisation requires.
The four scenarios can be broadly described as follows:
Scenario 1 represents a common conventional portfolio consisting of a
prominent city centre headquarters building supported by regional offices.
Scenario 2 represents a similar situation but for the headquarters being
located in a less prominent city centre (affecting property costs) and some
staff using serviced office space 14 .
Scenario 3 represents a further step towards staff using more flexible
spaces located around regional city suburbs and home working. The
requirement for flexible ICT infrastructure/equipment begins to increase as
staff use more mobile technology rather than desk-based IT equipment
and shared network facilities.
Scenario 4 represents a s ignificant move towards greater numbers of staff
being supported by flexible type spaces associated with regional suburbs
and home working. The ICT requirement increases more significantly as
home-offices need to be supported with individual routers/connections,
printers, laptop docking stations etc.
The prototype model revealed some interesting results relating to the
average portfolio occupancy costs within each distribution scenario.
Generally, the results show that as the distribution of workplaces becomes
more extensive (e.g. Scenarios 3 and 4) then costs per capita reduce (e.g
14 The models have been based upon a longer term (over 1-3 years) use of serviced office
solutions
22 SANE IST-2000-25257

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
by as much as 30% to 60% from Scenario 1). It should be noted that most
of the savings originate because of the following:
• The reduction in rental levels due to smaller offices and different
locations;
• The elimination of some support services costs e.g. mail distribution,
porterage, catering subsidy etc. as staff become less ‘fixed’ to
particular locations.
However, as noted previously, these generic results do not necessarily
apply to all organisations – there are likely to be cost complications
associated with:
• Additional costs associated with additional business processes (e.g.
changes in facilities management and/or service provision) necessary
to support distributed staff;
• Additional costs associated with a change in business policies e.g.
catering subsidy may not completely disappear, cash allowances may
be given as a perk;
• Additional travelling costs, IT costs, ‘passed-on’ costs for homeworkers
etc.;
• Other subsidies paid to staff to off-set costs ‘passed-on’ to
homeworkers.
Such issues are not impossible to forecast and could be added to the
models to appraise the total impact of an holistic distributed workplace
strategy.
SUSTAINABLE WORK ENVIRONMENTS
The delivery of effective sustainable accommodation for the new economy
is rooted within a broader context consisting of four parallel trends:
• Intensification of the use of space and time;
• Reduction of waste;
• Ensuring energy efficiency; and,
• Demands for business organisations to act more responsibly towards
their employees, society and the environment.
The changing perception of the function of the office building, as well as
new working methods, are driving increasing intensification of space and
time. As the working day is extended over a longer time frame, and office
workers become more mobile, space is being driven harder to allow
greater numbers of people to be serviced by the same amount of space,
and to be more productive within it (these trends are discussed in more
detail below). To achieve this has resulted in a reduction in the percentage
of traditional specialised office space; instead the functional character of
buildings for work is broadened, increasing both the accessibility and
flexibility of buildings for work. One aspect of this trend is the mix of public
and private space provision described in the SANE space environment
model, and facilitation in buildings of the shifting boundaries between the
two.
Urban environments have enormous ‘ecological footprints’, defined by their
overall consumption of material and production of waste. One of the key
aspects of waste is the inefficient utilisation of resources within the city,
and within buildings. As well as the intensification of the use of space
SANE IST-2000-25257 23

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
internally as described above, intensifying the use of spaces within the city
will assist in the reduction of the colossal waste associated with working
and living in cities. This will be accomplished through introducing
overlapping functions, increasing access to a variety of spaces, enabling
the use of public space for private activities and increasing the potential for
re-use of previously redundant space.
Energy use is the factor that tends to receive most attention in any
discussion around sustainability, and is the focus of most research into
building sustainability. Energy use needs to be seen in broader terms than
those that focus simply on the building envelope, although the efficiency of
the envelope in terms of embodied energy, or energy consumed over the
life of the building, is of course important. A more holistic view of energy
efficiency considers the consumption of energy per building user, rather
than in terms of units of space. This view takes into account the factor of
energy consumed through travel to and from buildings, as well as the
effectiveness of a building in terms of the number of people supported per
unit of space. It also examines the potential for the adaptability of a
building, which reduces the need for expenditure of energy in demolition
and new construction by ensuring that a building may be recycled over
decades or centuries through a number of uses.
The last trend discussed here is less tangible than those discussed above,
and incorporates aspects of all of these. Employer organisations,
particularly in Europe, are being encouraged to become increasingly
responsible towards their employees, society as a whole and the physical
environment. There is an apparent conflict here between the responsibility
of publicly traded organisations to produce profits for shareholders, and
wider interests. However, the trend is being driven by three factors:
• Increasing empowerment of employees through increased mobility,
independence, and redefinition of value from skills to knowledge;
• Increasing ethical awareness amongst customers who are realising the
value of their purchasing power, and a corresponding demand that
organisations be held to a greater level of accountability, resulting in a
shift from single index company reporting to ‘triple bottom line’ based
indicators, already voluntarily applied by many organisations but likely
to be required statutorily and,
• The interventionist state is in retreat and rather than abandon the
social objectives and goods that it previously guaranteed, it is
increasingly relying on corporations to fill the vacuum –a form of back
door privatisation.
In addition to the four broad drivers towards a more sustainable provision
of workplace accommodation, the knowledge economy has particular
business requirements that have implications for the supply of space to
accommodate knowledge workers.
The changing demands of the knowledge economy have already
influenced the way accommodation is procured and delivered. No longer
simply seen as space, the accommodation offer now includes the tenure
type, a level of amenity and additional value added services, so that the
workplace is provided as a serviced package (management, business and
support services).
The key driver for this change is the increasing need amongst
organisations for flexibility – in terms of finance, function and the space
itself. This requirement exists across a range of scales, from a freelance
individual who requires space on demand for variable amounts of time, to
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large corporate organisations divesting themselves of property assets and
leasing back their previously owned buildings as managed and fitted out
space from serviced business space suppliers. This trend is resulting in a
reduction of the amount of directly owned (long lease) space, with
diversification of real estate portfolio into owned, flexi and on-demand
space.
Additionally the conventional issues of sustainability, reduction of
embodied energy and consumption are impacting on the type of buildings
that are being delivered. Of key importance here is the potential for a
building to be naturally lit and ventilated – both of which are a function of
building depth and sectional height, as well as façade detailing.
Although the supply side is beginning to respond to the needs of the
knowledge economy, there are currently no specific measures for testing
the appropriateness of particular building types. Because of the increasing
complexity of workplace provision, these measures need to be both
quantitative and qualitative.
Qualitative measures will test such issues as:
• The quality of place – in terms of building location, accessibility,
amenity and context;
• Quality of space – in terms of fit out (space plan, furniture etc),
sectional height and floor width ratio, ventilation and lighting, and
potential for expression of organisational values; and,
• The capacity and extent of the provision of services, and flexibility of
tenure.
Current best practice in office design has begun to embrace a variety of
architectural and construction solutions to the problem of creating more
energy efficient and environmentally comfortable office buildings. However,
there is little attempt to question the prevailing workplace accommodation
paradigm. Within this paradigm, there have been significant advances in
terms of creating individual buildings that are more ‘environmentally
sustainable’, in the sense that they consume less energy and produce less
waste per measure of office space created.
SUSTAINABILITY METRICS IN THE NEW WORKPLACE
In general, however, existing sustainability indicators have a number of
weaknesses when applied to new economy workplace models, including
the following:
• they do not reflect the degree of complexity involved in designing a
workplace strategy;
• they do not always integrate the intent of workplace policy with the
strategy to be implemented;
• they do not provide a mechanism of feedback for assessment of
strategy in terms of the overall policy objectives and goals; and,
• it is difficult to quantify and/or monetise their implications to incorporate
into mainstream financial and accounting management systems.
When sustainability indicators are able to capture an organisation’s stated
intent, and reflect the dynamics of the workplace, they can provide a
powerful driver for change – both as a general marker of change and as
means of indicating the achievement of defined targets. In particular, a
well-articulated set of sustainability indicators has the following strengths:
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
• they provide a means of assessing performance, using non-financial
measures, that can be incorporated into strategic decision-making
processes;
• they provide an approximation of the extent of satisfaction with
workplace conditions (based on stated preferences and perceptions);
• they provide an indication of trends in work patterns and indicate how
a workplace strategy can respond to these; and,
• they allow for innovation in addressing workplace strategy
development.
It is clear that if we are to evaluate effectively the sustainability and
effectiveness of new developments in the workplace, we will require an
assessment methodology and indicators that take a new approach, one
that enables us to evaluate both the specific sustainability and
effectiveness of any particular workplace as well as its sustainability and
effectiveness relative to alternative options. In addition, the methodology
and indicators will need to embrace the environmental factors, as well as
enable an evaluation of the workplace in terms of its contribution to the
social sustainability of the individual, the working community and the wider
community. Lastly, these indicators must be framed in the context of
ensuring the economic sustainability of individuals within an organisation,
the organisation itself, and the organisation’s contribution to the wider
community.
In this respect, a new set of indicators might be derived in concept from the
triple bottom line accounting procedures, but reformed to construct a set of
workplace-specific indicators, i.e. a set that does not simply focus on the
building, but that instead focus on the 'performance' of staff in their
workspace, the ‘performance’ of the social contract between the staff and
their organisation, and the performance of the organisation vis a vis
stakeholders in the wider social and economic environment, and the
performance of the organisation in its transactions with its material and
natural environment. It must be remembered that the concept of the
workplace now extends well beyond the traditional office environment.
Since the workplace, the nature of work and the way organisations function
within society are all constantly evolving, it is important that the indicators
of workplace performance and sustainability are not static. To remain
useful, they must develop in line with the evolution of the organisations
they are assessing and contributing to. Thus, the indicators must be
flexible, and must be readily open to adaptation to deal with new situations.
The wider implications for this in terms of commercial development and the
landscape of urban areas is unknown, however thinking about work space
based on CSR and TBLA is a real opportunity and one that could drive a
paradigm shift in the way work takes place. Sustainability considerations
can be incorporated at many stages of the development of a workplace
strategy and, when used alongside, or better, integrated with, more
traditional measures of workplace effectiveness, they can lead to a truly
productive and sustainable workplace and organisation. Too much focus
on short-term effectiveness at the expense of sustainability will mean there
is no future for the organisation, long term. Too little focus on effectiveness
will also, in the end, be unsustainable. The two must be considered in
tandem. More energy must be put into testing and extending the work
already done on triple bottom line accounting, in order to move this
towards becoming a mainstream approach to accounting and company
reporting and evaluation.
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INTRODUCTION
Introduction
Space environment modelling (WP1) focuses on the architectural
aspects of the human environment in organisational settings
BACKGROUND
SANE is a two year EC-funded research programme considering the
combined impact of the new economy on people, process, place and
technology to identify new ways of accommodating work. Its focus is on
the creation of sustainable, collaborative workplaces for knowledge
workers across Europe, encompassing both virtual and physical spaces.
The key operational goal of the project is to develop a unified framework
for the design of sustainable work places in Europe. This multi-disciplinary
framework will generate designs that will allow distributed organisations to
take full advantage of coming advances in location independent computing
and ubiquitous networking. SANE will broaden the range of workplace
design parameters to include consideration of degrees of privacy and
relations between physical and virtual spaces. By embracing
considerations of public and private space the workspace environment
model developed will locate the office environment in the wider context of
the sustainable urban development and the regeneration of European
cities.
The SANE project is divided into a number of work packages producing a
series of deliverables for the European Commission, as outlined in the
Technical Annex of the Contract. The work packages are described briefly
below.
Human environment modelling (WP2) examines communications and
interaction in physical and virtual environments
Processes and tools (WP3) provides a physical base for WP1 & WP2 in
terms of understanding current and likely future technology tools and
processes
WP2 has the additional function of overseeing the synthesis of the work in
WP1, WP2 and WP3. It performs a further role in the project by overseeing
the technical functionality in WP1, WP2, WP3 and WP4.
Validation (WP4) is an ancillary work package that supports the
development work in WP1, WP2 and WP3 by testing the utility and
effectiveness of the theoretical frameworks and supporting practical tools
in a number of validation exercises across Europe.
Dissemination and exploitation (WP5) is responsible for the
dissemination and exploitation functions in the project and acts as the
interface between the project and the ICT industries, users, other IST
projects, and other EC Research & Development programmes.
The quality work package (WP6) carries out the quality management and
internal evaluation and assessment function for the project.
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INTRODUCTION
Lastly the co-ordination work package (WP7) will carry out the project coordination
function. In carrying out this function, it will be assisted by the
technical synthesis role played by WP2 as described above.
D1: the initial space environment model, was the first deliverable of the
space environment work package (WP1), and was designated as an
internal deliverable to the European Commission and the research
consortium. The workspace model provided the input for the study of
interaction of physical space in WP2, the analysis of processes and tools
(WP3) and the foundation of the validation exercise (WP4). It also provided
a theoretical contribution to the development of the unified framework that
synthesised the work of work packages 1, 2 and 3.
D2: the interim space environment model, was the second deliverable of
the space environment work package (WP1), also designated as an
internal deliverable for distribution to the European Commission and the
research consortium. The workspace model provided further input for the
study of interaction in physical space in WP2, the analysis of processes
and tools (WP3) and the formulation of the validation exercises (WP4). The
document also provided additional theoretical contribution to the
development of the unified framework that will synthesise the work of work
packages 1, 2 and 3.
In the present document, D3: the final SANE space environment model,
the concepts developed within the three theoretical workpackages of the
SANE project are fused into a generic methodology for the implementation
of a distributed workplace project. This methodology is deliberately kept at
a generic level because it is not intended to replace detailed project
delivery processes that may be organisation-specific.
THE UNIFIED FRAMEWORK
At its broadest level, the unified framework (UF) offers a guideline for
understanding how to create and use hybrid work environments, including
an understanding of business process and user requirements, work place
design and implementation in terms of people, process (including ICT
tools) and place
In today’s fast paced economy, organisations are increasingly faced with
multiple business-driven and technology- driven pressures. Organisations
must effectively manage these pressures and their impact on business
operations, customer facing service delivery and fulfilment functions.
By tightly aligning business strategy and processes with new work place
design concepts and hybrid information spaces, organisations can deliver
business advantage through improved workplace performance, increased
productivity, new distributed services and increased information exchange.
SANE defines, develops, implements and manages a productive
consulting strategy that integrates a business strategy with the processes,
knowledge and information about work place and technological
implementation into a dynamic, efficient enterprise. Therefore in SANE the
industrial partners in co-operation with the academic partners have
developed specific consulting services to analyse the specific needs of
their customers.
The consulting services specialise in business and technology strategy
development and implementation, work place and architecture,
introduction and requirements definition of ICT and performance
management. By combining business strategy and analysis, work place
design and architecture and sound IT strategy and planning with extensive
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INTRODUCTION
project experience, SANE will offer a tailored approach to customer
focused solution delivery.
The implementation of a distributed workplace solution will require the
active participation of a multi-disciplinary team both from within the
organisation as well as involving external consultants. The exact
composition of the team will depend on factors such as the skills within
each organisation, timescales and resource availability.
The generic project process is suitable for complex projects involving large
organisations working across a number of locations. It may, however, be
appropriate to abbreviate the process for some projects and the project
team will need to decide which steps to omit or streamline. The
abbreviated process is likely to involve less data gathering and more
intuitive mapping of work styles on to work settings. Use of the fast-track
process means the validation steps associated with the workplace solution
will be pushed into the post-occupancy stage and the results of the
validation will be applied on future projects.
At each stage the goals and outputs are described and a number of
potential tools and methods that could be used to gather the necessary
information are listed. The choice of an appropriate methodology or tool
will be dependent on a wide range of factors including size of organisation,
organisational culture, timescale and project budget.
It should be noted that this consultancy process relates to the development
of a workplace strategy. The implementation of this strategy may simply
result in better use of existing resources or the introduction of new ICT
tools, changes in work process or the integration of sustainability issues
into general process rather than the construction of new buildings or
facilities which is the traditional ‘end result’ of workplace projects.
implementation project. The implementation of a distributed working
strategy will require careful planning involving all areas of the business.
Critical issues to be considered include:
• Costs and benefits of implementing the strategy (real estate savings,
investment costs in IT and provision of business services)
• Risks to business delivery
• HR policies on remote working
• Provision of training
• Corporate branding
• Maintenance of community and culture
• Knowledge management
• Management of teams and individuals
• Confidentiality
• Client perceptions
• Provision of business services
The widespread adoption of distributed working strategies is likely to result
in a fundamental shake-up of the property procurement chain and major
new players are likely to emerge who are able to combine expertise in
workplace design, hotel management and service provision and IT
delivery. Consultants will also find it necessary to cross traditional
boundaries to provide integrated advice and strategies that address the
issues listed above.
Issues of sustainability, ICT and human communications must be
considered alongside the issues that are more typically part of a workplace
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INTRODUCTION
STRUCTURE OF DOCUMENT
D3: the final space environment model, is divided into four sections.
The changing workplace
Chapters 1 – 3 chronicle the development of the changing workplace, from
office factory to the many varieties of distributed workplace necessitated by
the rise in importance of knowledge work. This section deals with the
influences that have brought about this change, the forms that the change
have taken, and concludes with an assessment of traditional forms of
workplace measurement, finding them inadequate to deal with a
sustainability-grounded approach.
Sustainable work environments
Chapters 10 – 12 examine the physical implications for the built
environment of distributed working, provide examples of shared workplace
solutions and conclude with some suggestions for measurement tools that
derive from sustainability-grounded rather than shorter-term, traditional
values.
Towards a space environment model
Chapters 4- 6 trace the development of the SANE space environment
model, beginning with a discussion of the rise of the need for distributed
workplaces, outlining early models of distributed space use and accounting
for the incremental development of the SANE space environment model,
from its initial to its final manifestation.
A SANE strategy
Chapters 7 – 9 begin with a generic methodology for the creation of a
SANE strategy for workplace provision, chart its implementation and
provide detailed costing tools to underline the business case for workplace
evaluation in a changed business, organisational and sustainably-driven
climate.
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