Key factors at play in the world economy continue to affect the Bay Area including globalization and outsourcing, recruiting and retaining talented knowledge workers, improving productivity through process improvement, and effective deployment of information technology. Now, as companies continue to search for competitive advantage, a strong drive for integration and a more holistic approach to addressing the changing business landscape is gaining momentum. Getting the most out of fixed assets, especially real estate is a key part of this effort.

Integration creates the opportunity to explore a fresh set of questions about the work environment. Since the key elements of any successful enterprise – people, knowledge, technology, process and practice – all play themselves out in physical space, workplace strategy & design is increasingly providing the platform for vital organizational dialogue.

Cornish & Carey’s Client Solutions group is partnering with Emergent Solutions, Inc. to create a clear path for our customers to begin addressing workplace effectiveness in a more comprehensive way. This means providing a workplace design solution that combines professional knowledge and capabilities previously viewed as separate.

Physical space is not neutral to workplace effectiveness; it can support or hinder the ability of people to achieve strategic objectives. Interior design and office layout should be based on key organizational social practices and process flows. The goal is to bring together the more intangible socially driven elements of work effectiveness with concrete physical design. This means that a large corporate campus can have many differently configured spaces according to the kinds of work being done. For example, the environment for creative work done by engineers, chemists, marketers and customer service providers may be designed very differently to reflect specific processes and/or desired outcomes. This suggests the emergence of smaller scale space design targeted for particular kinds of work. These smaller, more adaptive spaces must be easily altered as business conditions warrant and this is reflected in the development (by Steel Case, Haworth, Herman Miller, et al) of architectural elements and modules designs that are far easier to assembly, alter or remove.

Integration of physical design with more social and process oriented aspects of work is no easy task. The challenge for many of our existing and potential tenants is to effectively scope out and manage projects that explore workplace effectiveness and result in reconfigured space. Integrating and crafting work processes and workplaces is an active and collaborative exercise that requires the involvement of multiple stakeholders including workplace inhabitants, organizational leaders, technologists, corporate real estate, and designers. We bring the most current knowledge of workplace design to the table through our best-in-class partners - along with expert ability to engage multiple stakeholders and facilitate the design process. We stand ready to engage with our customers to leverage physical space for strategic advantage.

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