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Outstanding offices - how Birmingham is forging ahead [Birmingham Post (England)](Birmingham Post (England) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Cundall staff undertake a charity bike ride >>Two Snowhill Picture/Cundall THOSE in the Cundall Birmingham office are 'slightly' competitive and so when they outgrew their office in St. Paul's Square and decided to move to Colmore Row they wanted to create an office which would win awards. They wanted to have the best office in the company but beyond that they wanted to use the in- house mechanical and electrical engineering disciplines, as well as their in-house specialist lighting group, acousticians and audio visual / I.T. expertise to design an amazing space for their staff. Cundall is a multidisciplined engineering consultancy with national and international offices and has been located in Birmingham for over ten years but have been trading nationally since the seventies. They wanted the office to reflect the high-quality brand of the organisation, engender a sense of pride amongst their staff, and enable efficient high quality delivery of their services. The cutting-edge design style of the Technology Media and Telecommunications sector were thought to best represent the young, dynamic ethos of this thriving engineering and technology business. Green staff, green office: Giving staff the most sustainable environment in which to work IF sustainability is at your core and you are fitting out a new office what do you do? Well the answer is you push the design boundaries further than you would for conventional projects, where clients expectation is more often in line with more predictable orthodox approaches to workplace and engineering design. Before moving, Cundall undertook a sustainability survey, and found that one area they needed to address was carbon emissions due to travel to the office. Many staff were driving to work, annually emitting 2400kg of Co2 per person, compared with an average for their other offices of 1150 kg. By moving to the city centre, they aim to address this and encourage staff to use public transport or to cycle to work (secure bicycle parking has been provided along with showers, changing facilities and lockers). The new Cundall Birmingham office will achieve a Gold SKA rating (the highest possible rating). There are various measures within the office to reduce energy demand, such as task lighting. Cundall is conducting an experiment at present into the effect of plants on the air quality in the office which it is hoped will allow them to reduce the need for air-conditioning in the future and allow future clients to do the same. Finally a green office means engaging with the community. The Cundall cycle ride to open the new office raised over Pounds 4,000 for Birmingham Children's Hospital and the reception of the new office is be used to exhibit art from local artists. The best practice in office development THE successful thinking behind the Cundall Birmingham office needs to be applied to large office developments just as it does with office fit-outs. An example of this is Two Snow Hill where Cundall worked for Balfour Beatty on what is the largest development to be built in the UK, outside London, since the credit crunch. Cundall acted as building services engineer and environmental consultant. The Two Snow Hill project saw the construction of a 14 storey, new-build office building that is perceived as a land-mark development for Birmingham. The building comprises of 28,800m2 of 'grade A' office space and 650m2 ground floor retail space in four separate units. The joined up thinking and team attitude, enabled the successful delivery of a award-winning BREEAM 'Excellent' project. The construction process was affordable and viable even within the constraints of the original site infrastructure. Two Snow Hill has enhanced public realm, accessibility and amenity for local businesses and community. The development has created a strategic link between the business centre of Birmingham and the historic Gun and Jewellery quarters. This pioneering project has had numerous site tours organised by The Chartered Institute of Building with focuses on sustainability and how Cundall assisted on gaining vital BREEAM points. Two Snow Hill has been a huge success in terms of assisting growth in Birmingham, but also becoming a key project demonstrating a high level of sustainable credentials. Be connected: Ensuring you are using your technology to the full? CONNECTIVITY is critical to all organisations but technology is constantly updating and changing so getting the right option when you invest is critical. Cundall is a very connected organisation and the new Birmingham office is an example of this. Cundall has recently moved to a full video-conferencingfrom-desk solution using Microsoft Lync(R) to improve communication between offices. They recognised that this growing means of communication would provide new technical challenges for offices in terms of lighting and acoustics in particular and wanted the space to be designed to optimise this means of communication. Meeting rooms are provided with audio visual facilities aligned to the different types of meetings held. They provide high definition projection and video conferencing to support management meetings, design reviews and briefings. The AV systems allow the connection of fixed PC's and laptops along with wireless connection of iPads and iPhones. Increasingly Cundall is extending its video conferencing integration beyond its own offices by 'federating' with clients and collaborators, providing the ability to connect simply from any device with video and audio such as smartphone, tablet, laptop or PC. The right light: How to ensure the optimum lighting levels? OVER recent years both lighting design and lighting technology have gone through quite a revolution. Historically both speculative and fit out offices have been illuminated with a blanket of light from a fixed grid of recessed lights within the suspended ceiling. While this lights the working area, it creates a very flat lit environment. The latest research, which has been included in the new standards and guides, shows that the lighting design should illuminate the areas which the eye can see and deliver a lit environment which puts the light where it is needed and avoids over lighting other areas. Task lighting has been adopted in the new Cundall Birmingham office with the desk surfaces, ceiling surfaces, vertical surfaces such as the walls and seating areas illuminated. More importantly no lighting has been positioned in the corridors through the office and instead the corridors will be lit with whatever light comes from the surrounding areas. In addition to providing the occupants with a bright and vibrantly lit environment and one which reflects the latest research on user comfort and productivity, placing the light where it is needed combined with the lighting controls has meant that Cundall is using less than half the light than would be used in a comparable modern office design. Future opportunities Information overload: Where do you store data? THE Midlands economy is picking up and it appears to be retail & industrial opportunities that are growing faster than other sectors. Various development sites appear to be insisting on light industrial/manufacturing rather than distribution warehousing. And many of the area's main industrial players continue to expand. With regards to retail, various shopping centres around the Midlands are undergoing refurbishment or extension, such as Pavilions, Bull Ring, Mell Square & Touchwood. And whilst many thought education might have dropped off by now, we are still seeing plenty of opportunities for schools, colleges & universities. Here at Cundall, we are very much looking forward to a healthy future. THE secure storage of data is a critical issue for all companies. This grows in complexity with the size of the business. There are various options available to all businesses from on-site data rooms through taking storage space in third party facilities, cloud services, and for many large companies there is the requirement to build their own data centre. Each of these options need to be carefully considered, designed, backed up and secured, all without any loss of service to the user. This balance of engineering, ICT design and mission critical attention to detail means that very specialist teams are required for design and delivery. Expert knowledge is required of the technology that will be used to heat and cool a data centre as well of the IT systems that will add to the resilience. Innovation needs to be at the heart of the process when designing critical and high technology applications. With any high resilience project, speed of delivery, simplicity of design, proven track record and efficiency of operation is key. The focus in today's environmentally conscious world is to design technical real estate and data centres without compromising design resilience, while realising significant improvements in operating costs and CO2 emissions. Regular assessment needs to be made of all facilities to ensure that they are fit for purpose. It might be that the life of older facilities can be extended by upgrading the technology and plant to ensure extra storage and reliability. We were delighted that Cundall chose Cathedral Court for its new Birmingham office.We are thrilled with both the innovative concept of the fit out, which is entirely appropriate for a leading firm of engineers, and the quality of the finished product. We share their confidence that the new office will help them to continue the development of their business over the coming years Tony Green Hortons' Estate Sounds good: Balancing office sounds with noise CUNDALL has been working with many developers and end users for a number of years and took the opportunity, when designing its own space, to challenge the norms and build the fit-out that is the best solution for all the engineering factors. The behaviour of sound and noise in the workplace is critical to its overall success, affecting concentration, productivity and, essentially for Cundall, retention of staff. Acoustic conditions must facilitate the tasks being carried out, therefore internal dividing elements and finishes need to be designed to provide requisite levels of privacy or enable communication. Within the open plan space Cundall has created personalised environments for staff, with each desk module having its own lighting, ventilation and acoustic control measures; coordination of these has been critical and they are really pleased with the results. The common consensus from staff is that this is the best office they have ever worked in. (c) 2014 ProQuest Information and Learning Company; All Rights Reserved. |