5 Questions to Answer When Planning for an Office Space

1. What are your Requirements of an Office Space?

The first step to any planning requires you to list your team’s specific requirements from the workspace. Ask yourself if your team members will each need a dedicated workstation or can you design an open floor plan. Another important factor to consider is – do your customers visit your office often as you may need to design meeting or conference rooms.

2. How will you Accommodate Expansion?

As you expand your operations you will require more space to accommodate a larger team. Future expansion must be considered in advance and ideally at the time of negotiating your lease for office space. You should be looking at your maximum headcount over a 3-5-year horizon to avoid any future problems of expansion.

3. What works for your Team – Open spaces or Cubicles?

The answer to that question lies in the nature of your work and the preferences of your team. Ask yourself if your team works better in an open and interactive environment or if your employees prefer a closed space to focus better. An ideal solution to balance both needs will be to creating separate zones for private and focused work and some open areas to allow your team to interact. A lot of offices promote collaboration between different teams and divisions on a single assignment. To facilitate these interactions, make room for open collaborative spaces and common working areas.

4. Should you Consider Remote Working Plans?

Millennials expect the freedom of choice to work from their home, office or even a coffee shop and with the advent of technologies such as cloud computing, such flexibility has become a norm rather than an exception. To create more flexibility at the workplace, you could consider investing in movable furniture that allows you to make space for any number of employees on a given day.

5. Do you have any Special Requirements for Office Space?

At the time of designing the layout of your office, it’s important to factor in any special requirements for your staff such as a breakout area, lunch room or separate rooms for private meetings. With gadgets dominating the workspace, you must also ensure that there is space for servers, cables, and wiring to accommodate them.

The commercial real estate market is brimming with office space options to meet your specific requirements. While some offices may only need few cosmetic changes, some may require a complete overhaul to suit your requirements. Our team at Citadel can be your partner in this process and lend professional help to help you design the ideal office space. Get in touch!

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