Breath of Fresh Air

One of the first things you see as you walk out of Slough train station is a rather down-at-heel office block with a somewhat hopeful ‘To Let’ sign tacked to the wall. Empty now, 1 Brunel Way was one of three buildings mobile phone giant O2 occupied in the town until the firm consolidated into a bespoke facility 10-minutes’ drive away.

Now, it’s the company’s shuttle bus, ferrying up to 250 staff back and forth between the town and the new 216,500 sq ft O2 European headquarters, that hogs the front spot outside the station.

Consolidating three buildings into one is nothing new for many facilities professionals, but the nature of O2’s relocation was enough to keep even the most organised facilities, project or logistics planner busy. In addition to the 67,000 sq ft at Brunel Way and the 69,000 sq ft at Wellington Street, also in the town centre, the firm had a 98,000 sq ft facility at 260 Bath Road, outside the town. After exploring several ways to bring staff together, the FM and property team decided to stay close to home. Landlord Segro was planning to demolish the building next to the Bath Road premises, and O2 alighted on the idea of taking on the new building and creating a bridge between the existing East building and the new West building.

Then followed a three-year period of facilities flux. The landlord completed the Cat A fit-out and handed the new West building over to the O2 project team in late 2007, led by Andrew Kier from O2. The O2 fit-out was completed over the following months and construction started on the link bridge. Once the fit-out was complete, in October 2009, staff from the existing East building moved across to the West building and the East building was completely refurbed, and the link bridge completed.

The East building was home to the restaurant which meant that during the year-long East building refurb works, a temporary canteen was created in the car park which was open from breakfast to mid-afternoon serving a full hot menu. Sara Burton, national soft services manager at O2, describes it as a triumph over adversity for Lenny Ellis, ISS project manager and Anne Kavanagh, ISS food and hospitality manager, together with the Bath Road FM Katie McLean. “The temporary gas supply froze in the winter and the Portakabins were sweltering in the summer, there was limited space and equipment, but the team did an amazing job providing a quality service in a basic environment and there wasn’t the expected fall in sales.” Meeting-room hospitality continued throughout the building and a Starbucks was opened up in the link building to support the temporary catering function.

By late 2010, the East building refurb was complete and the entire campus was ready for full occupation. The FM team endured nine weekends of moving between 200-300 people a time into their final positions in the new HQ. That included a period of four weeks where the team was fully running three buildings in the town, including three restaurants on the different sites, while people were moving across to the new facility, followed by the inevitable clean-up process once the transfer was complete. Staff numbers from FM partners ISS were increased to deal with it.

Communication was a key part of the success of the process, says Mark McNulty, O2’s head of FM. There were tours of the new facility, road shows and training sessions on the technology such as desk booking and printing. Staff were also involved in choosing the working styles and options in the new facility — there was a trial area in the East building where many different working modules, desks, chairs and carpets were available for staff to try out and rate. The most popular made it into the new workspace.

The result is less an office and more a campus. The visitor approaches the facility through the link building, a huge glass structure infused with natural light, and is immediately welcomed with a voucher for a free Starbucks and free WiFi. The link building, essentially an internal street, also includes a WH Smith and farmers’ market stalls selling cakes and fresh bread, and leads to a Costa Coffee in the East building.

There are 1,500 desks on the campus, supporting 2,000 people, compared to 2,048 desks across the previous three sites. In the planning stages, the FM team worked with the various departments to look at people’s working styles and requirements.

The result is that the staff are either one of 600 huggers (who work mainly from a desk in an O2 office, generally in admin roles) or one of 800 hoppers, who can work from a mix of office, home and mobile locations. “We wanted to create a community where people can connect with each other anywhere and work anywhere,” says McNulty. “The only downside of that is that it can take time to get to your chosen desk as you meet so many people on the way. The upside is that you’ve often done the business you needed to do before you get to a desk.”

There are no cellular offices — even CEO Ronan Dunne and chairman and CEO of O2 Europe Matthew Key sit in an open plan environment, on a fixed desk.

Dotted around between meeting rooms and more traditional desking are super spaces — open spaces, not owned by any one team. They are made up of a variety of different work environments from big comfy sofas and caf seating, to low seating, traditional meeting table and collaborative working benches. Different lighting complements each style. “We want people to work how they live,” says Burton.

On the first floor, the Segment Street includes three meeting rooms which are designed to reflect the lives of O2 customers and inspire staff to live life through their client’s eyes. The Frenetic Families room includes a huge kitchen table, a fireplace adorned with family pictures and IKEA-style furniture dotted around; the Sociables room has a range of different furniture from beanbags to comfy sofas; and the Ambitious Status Seekers spaces echoes a swish, sleek office.

The company’s own advertising adorns the walls around the building — staff see the adverts before they hit the screens or high street and are refreshed on a weekly or fortnightly basis.

As you’d expect from a mobile phone firm, the technology is impressive, verging on the geeky. Smart boards abound allowing people to link to the network and have video conferences with other offices. There are two telepresence rooms which creates a virtual meeting room. One user sits at one half of the desk and their opposite number is at the other half of the same desk, but in another office anywhere in the world. The table and wall colours are identical which creates a extraordinarily real feeling of both being in the same place. There are multiple WiFi systems including an internal secure network, visitor WiFi and the Cloud. A one gigabyte link is about to be introduced into the building. And everywhere you look people are tapping away at handheld devices. An O2 store in the link building completes the high-street feel.

Each floor has two refreshment areas which include a fridge, water and vending machine. In addition to the Starbucks, Costa and snacks from WH Smiths, the restaurant is open from 7.30am until mid-afternoon and serves nearly 2,000 covers a day, beating all sales forecasts. O2 provides a generous staff subsidy.

It’s not just O2’s staff who have seen a revolution in their working environment; the way the facilities have been managed have also changed dramatically. In the old BT days, FM was internally managed with a large number of directly-employed staff but this changed when Taylor Woodrow was brought in as a managing agent with multiple service providers.

Again this model evolved and in 2007, ISS signed a 3+2 year deal with O2 to provide all FM services, except security which is provided by G4S. Now 100 ISS staff work on site together with 20 security staff; nationally, the figures are 350 and 110 (see box for a look at the other sites they cater for). “They work seamlessly as a team,” says McNulty. “We really feel we’re living the FM dream where they collaborate and train together and are one team.” McNulty describes it as a constant evolution and the desire to get the best service for the best price. “We saw the opportunity to strip out the managing agent and find a provider which self-delivered without that need for the management level.”

Much of the driver behind the consolidation of properties and creation of the Slough campus was to create a new collaborative environment and although the new building has only been live since early December last year, staff already talk about the increased efficiency and productivity of having everyone in the same building. But direct cost savings and sustainability were also key drivers. The reduction in desks will save an estimated £3.84m a year alone.

The new facility achieved a ‘very good’ Breeam rating and its operational sustainability credentials are high. Forum for the Future assessed its performance, using the Beginner to Leader model and gave it a ‘leader’ rating in its water use, use of materials, and waste. Rainwater harvesting is used for landscape irrigation while dual-flush toilets with infra-red controls, low flow control devices and metering have been installed. Less than two per cent of the unwanted office furniture from the old buildings went to landfill (it was typically donated to charities) and the recycling target is 90 per cent. Recycling has been built into the new environment through dedicated hubs on each floor.

Despite the sumptuous working environment, McNulty is keen to emphasise that the changes have been less about the physical office environment and more about changing how people work. Staff are encouraged to take advantage of remote working technologies where appropriate and there was an early recognition that home working was going to be a bigger part of the way we worked and that needed to be supported. Staff can book desks, racking shelves and technology to support them at home and there is an MSN-type facility so people can chat easily wherever they are.

There is no culture of presenteeism at O2 — people are measured on their output rather than the number of hours they spend at their desk. Popping to the campus gym at 3pm is not career suicide. “We’re all about making it easier to connect with each other,” says McNulty. “And if we, as O2, couldn’t do that ourselves then we certainly couldn’t sell it to our customers. It’s about walking the walk.”