Central to our core business is the delivery of high performance workplaces. City of York Council, with around 1500 office-based staff housed across 14 different locations, needed to rationalise their footprint requirements to meet its commitment to combine cost-savings with improvements in service delivery in a new flagship office.

At the same time, the council demanded space to accommodate many of its partners, to increase collaborative working, deliver genuinely integrated services and support the business model from a funding perspective.

We worked with the Council, undertaking a six month due diligence exercise to define requirements and create the design strategy. During the two year project we worked closely with the key steering group, adding value to the change process by supporting workshops and development session to establish how the Council could re-engineer processes, This included developing protocols and engaging with teams to ensure a smooth transition to their new ‘agile’ footprint, with desk sharing, new technologies, removal of desk ownership, reduced reliance on hard copy information and a new ‘lean’ culture based on performance not hierarchy.

There has been a fundamental shift in the Council’s thinking towards the use of space and the impact the environment has on service delivery. Our involvement in this project was as much about change management as it was design, and the result is a modern agile environment which forms a base for well over 1500 staff who are now empowered to chose where best to discharge their services, whilst being co-located with other public sector organisations such as NHSE.