choosing a designer
A Good Design Begins with Asking the Right Questions
In some ways, office space designers are not hard to find …once you can differentiate them from residential designers. They, in general, are quite creative and become very excited to offer their suggestions on how you can improve the look and feel of your office space once they are exposed to it. However, a really good office space designer can’t even begin to produce a proper office space design for a company without first understanding that organization’s wants and needs as it relates to its office space. The best way to know that is by visiting the site and asking the right questions.
What are some of those questions?
Well, to understand the culture and flow of your business, an office space designer may ask the following:
- How many employees (full time, part-time and contract included) does your company have?
- Do clients visit your office space to meet with your staff?
- How important is collaboration or teamwork?
- How important is privacy within the office?
- What is the flow of a regular workday for you and your staff?
- Are there any challenges within your current office space layout that you would want addressed?
- Are there any benefits within the current office space that you would want preserved or duplicated within your new office space?
This is just a sample of questions an office space designer may ask. With answers to the above, an office space designer can create an initial layout for your company that would immediately address any wants, needs or concerns that are not being met within the current office space layout. In other words, an office space designer that is truly client-focused will save you time and money by doing his or her best to present a design that is conducive to the optimal operation of your organization and best represents the character of your business.
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DJ McGauley and Associates Inc. is your Office Move, Reconstruction and Reconfiguration Project Management Company of choice for the Toronto, GTA and surrounding areas. If an office move or reconstruction of your 2000 – 25,000 sqft office space is a remote possibility, consider contacting us to arrange a no-obligation site meeting. We guarantee that by the end of that meeting you will know all that would be required to make your office move/reconstruction project a successful reality.
Call 416-239-1931 , email [email protected], or visit our website to complete our contact form.
Don’t Be Fooled by a Block Floorplan!
There are many main factors that come into play when choosing a designer to create and “build” your ideal office space—three of which are pricing, personality and the plan (floorplan that is).
Pricing: This is obvious. You want the best quality for the lowest cost possible (the best bang for your buck).
Personality: Relatively obvious. You want someone who works compatibly with you and your team while working towards realizing your ideal office space.
The Plan: Deceivingly obvious. The designer that presents the most favorable looking floorplan is likely to be the professional you will want to choose. That is the premise most decision-makers bank on. However, many fall into the trap of making their final decision on the wrong floorplan.
Let me explain.
Designers vying for your business will likely present you with a block floorplan. As the name suggests, a block floorplan is a ceiling-view schematic drawing of an office space with sections “blocked” on the page to represent individual office and workstation areas, bathroom spaces, stairways, elevators, exits, etc. Some block floorplans may even include top-view drawings of furniture such as a desk or a sofa just to give an idea of furniture placement within each blocked space. Block floorplans are great for providing a conceptual view of how your office space could be laid out, but they do not represent an exact view of your office space simply because they are most often not based on the actual measurements of both your office layout and your furniture.
Now, a block floor plan does have additional benefits: it can reveal to a decision-maker what a designer is capable of creating and may even give some insight to the question of whether or not the designer can identify with your business needs in relation to your office space. However, as a cover letter is with a resume, a block floorplan should be seen as part of an introduction to a designer who could potentially provide a solution to your office space– not as the actual solution to your office space.
Block floorplans may help narrow your choices of designers to use for your office space, but the real determining factor would be in the permit grade design…but we will discuss that in another blog.
Corporate Space Planning & Relocation Advice 