by Brianna Crandall — February 20, 2013—The International Facility Management Association (IFMA) will officially open its new global headquarters in Houston, Texas, on February 21. The new “Service Center of Excellence” features some of the best ideas and technologies drawn from the expertise of IFMA’s 23,000 members and reportedly offers a unique example of what the workplace of tomorrow might look like in the areas of mobility strategies, sustainable workplaces, and promoting a global mindset.
Mobility Strategies
The new headquarters showcases cutting-edge mobility strategies for people and ideas both internally within the walls of the office and externally around the world. According to IFMA, a facility that supports human mobility offers a wide range of advantages. Operational environments change from week to week, while the day-to-day needs of individual employees change as well. By rethinking its traditional fixed office layout and liberating employees from assigned workstations, IFMA is helping to drive change instead of merely reacting to it.
For internal mobility, the Service Center of Excellence foregoes traditional assigned stations for repetitive tasks in favor of flexible meeting spaces that can be used by individuals and groups to support a wide variety of different tasks. These spaces include unassigned work benches with computer docking stations, short-term touch down stations with computer connectivity, meeting rooms of various sizes and layouts, phone rooms for private telephone or Web-based conversations, focus rooms for solitary work, and public spaces like shared resource centers, kitchens and document preparation tables. These internal mobility features ultimately promote collaboration across different departments and different levels of management.
For external mobility, IFMA is utilizing technological solutions including Web-based communication, smart phones, tablets and mobile computers to allow remote workers to be as productive from home or on the road as they are in the office. In addition to increased convenience for the employee, remote workers benefit the environment and save money by requiring less space and reducing the daily commute. Notably, IFMA’s support for external mobility—in combination with the multiuse functionality of internal mobility—means the Service Center of Excellence can operate with nearly half the useable square footage compared to the previous location.
IFMA foresees the new facility as the first big step in a more ambitious effort to empower people by decentralizing the daily operations of the global association. The organization expects mobile and remote employees will learn to collaborate from anywhere in the world as naturally as they learned to do it in the same building, and that new Centers of Excellence will be opened around the world, duplicating the original format where appropriate and bringing unique functionality when necessary, and ultimately improving international collaboration and eliminating the need for useless duplication.
Sustainable Workplace
The new headquarters also offers a strong case study of the application of sustainable workplaces, employing innovative technologies and techniques to benefit the triple bottom line of people, planet and profit. Through employee mobility, shared workspaces and smart design, the new facility requires only about half the useable square footage compared with the previous space, reducing the environmental impact, saving money and increasing productivity. The Center “recycles” the physical space by using modular and convertible office spaces that can be quickly and easily repurposed for multiple uses.
With the goal of resource efficiency, furnishings, finishes and fixtures were chosen with sustainability, as well as aesthetics and function, in mind. Occupancy sensors will turn off lights in unoccupied rooms, and IFMA will monitor energy and water consumption in order to refine and improve conservation efforts. To connect people to each other and their environment, and to reduce the environmental and actual cost of lighting, the layout maximizes the penetration of daylight into the space while promoting line-of-sight views of the outside environment.
Locating in the heart of Houston’s Memorial City was also intentional, making the facility commuter-friendly and bringing a host of amenities within walking distance. The building itself is a high-performance facility, with an ENERGY STAR rating of 98. Utilizing mobile technology allows employees to work remotely, lowering the carbon footprint.
Global Mindset
The new IFMA headquarters also employs a wide range of design features intended to promote and support an international mindset among employees, recognizing that IFMA’s 23,000 members come from 78 countries around the world. Enabling telework and eliminating the need to commute every day expands the workday at either end, which helps employees make connections to members in various time zones around the world. Community work areas are named after continents, while closed focus rooms and meeting rooms have country or city names from locales around the world where there is an IFMA presence, giving a physical presence to what might otherwise be merely an abstraction. Acknowledging the design theory that a simple change of color can have a profound impact on the way a space is perceived, the Center opted for an international approach to color, choosing red, blue, green and yellow for accents and timeless, warm neutral tones for the flooring, millwork and primary wall colors.
The Center’s design was intended to be easily copied for facilities around the world, duplicating the original format where appropriate and bringing unique functionality when necessary, thereby reducing unnecessary duplication within the organization and creating international collaboration.
