Architect client makes Sunday Times

Client maber, the architecture practice, featured in The Sunday Times, commenting on leveraging the workplace industry.

Dan Pilling, Head of Workplace at Maber and Deputy Chair of BIFM (British Institute of Facilities Management) Workplace Special Interest Group, shared his thoughts on how to create an office that enables productivity.

According to evidence presented to the Review by design teams, the majority of projects are cost-planned before the workplace designers have taken a brief, and designers are allowed minimal to zero engagement with the end users or the executive board. This inevitably results in lower levels of employee satisfaction.

He comments: “I would be embedded within some client facilities management teams and I found time and again that they were frustrated at being locked out of some key decisions.”

He proposed a ‘centralised portal’ which would ‘enable all stakeholders in the workplace sector to access and participate in what he feels is lacking an objective view, free from sales angles, or workplace solutions tied to specific products and sensationalist Google-esque case studies.

But this is slowly starting to change, says Pilling. “What’s happening now is that there have been very interesting conversations about who is in control and who should be at that table. The fact is we have a multifaceted problem which needs multifaceted input.”

Dan is a leading figure in designing work spaces for productivity and wellbeing. He was the winner of the 2015 BIFM and CIPD competition to discover new concepts in workplace design.

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