Financial sector workplaces, UK

Financial sector businesses never stop evolving their workplaces should evolve with them

Strength in the financial industry is founded on consistent acumen and agility. No matter which particular sector of finance is your specialty, creating a workplace that supports and reflects these values makes good business sense.

In physical terms, this raises a multitude of spatial possibilities, each of which can require considerable expertise to realise. For example, expansion into new activities or markets may entail creating new offices. Evolving technological needs, operational mechanisms and brand identity can necessitate periodic renovation and/or reorganisation of existing spaces. As always, these changes must be conceived with a tight focus on the ultimate goals of increasing efficiency, productivity and profitability – and performed with minimal disruption to normal operations.

Over almost three decades, M Moser Associates has been meeting this need for comprehensive solutions with an equally complete spectrum of in-house expertise. For a wide range of clients in London and other major financial capitals, the design, engineering and construction expertise we offer has been the key to creating workplaces of immediate effectiveness and enduring quality.

Matching space to purpose: offices that meet your needs

Financial sector firms have unique technical and spatial requirements that are essential to effective operations. Whether the project is a brand-new office or the renovation of an existing one, it is vital that the space supports them.

New spaces – Optimised from the ground up

Once the strategic decision is made to establish a new office, selecting the right space becomes the first critical task. But because financial sector firms often have unique workplace needs, the space may require a more robust and specialised engineering infrastructure than is usually found in commercial buildings. Architectural considerations like the size and shape of the floor plate, the position of the building core, and slab-to-slab ceiling height will also impact the ultimate effectiveness of the space.

As part of its ‘total solutions’ approach, M Moser offers a range of prelease capabilities that can complement the client’s own in-house specialists and real estate agent to identify the best possible space option. An essential part of the process is due diligence, a professional investigation which yields a wealth of data about potential spaces. As well as technical detail, factors like the appearance of the base building and effectiveness of vertical transportation services are also considered and thoroughly analysed.

The result is a true and complete picture of a space’s qualities, potential, advantages and shortcomings. This knowledge is crucial in determining a realistic total project cost, including expenditures associated with any necessary infrastructure upgrades. A due diligence report can also be a useful tool in negotiating favourable lease terms.

Renovated spaces – Revitalising your working environment

Impetus for redesigning an existing workplace can arise from any of a number of needs: upgrading technology, refining business and working practices, and meeting changing standards for safety and/or sustainability are just a few typical examples. What all renovations and redesigns have in common is the goal of exploiting space more effectively than what was previously possible.

Determining how this is to be done requires knowledge of the client’s unique immediate and long-term business goals, operations and culture. Key considerations for the design include operational and workflow patterns, business groupings, proximities and adjacencies, stacking scenarios, and horizontal blocking relationships. M Moser’s integrated team of workplace professionals gain this via ongoing dialogue with the client.

Engaging in dialogue with client decision-makers also opens the way to expanded interactions between project professionals and the project end-users themselves, creating the basis of an effective programme of change management.

Design options for an effective workplace

An extraordinarily complex matrix of social psychology, communications, and use of market data systems and information technology underpins daily business in the financial services sector. In simple terms, the success of a workplace is judged on how fully it supports these activities.

These concepts are among the many options to consider when planning and designing a new space:

The impact of workflows & corporate culture

A firm’s need or desire for staff collaboration and teamwork may dictate a design emphasis on ‘open landscape planning’. For trading and non-trading functions alike, this type of space further lends itself to universal benching solutions which can provide an enhanced degree of flexibility in coping with technological upgrades and changes of staff headcount. Social spaces can also be designed into the work environment as a catalyst to team-building.

Considering mobility

As non-trading employees are typically away from their desks approximately 60 percent of the time, many financial firms are also opting to introduce mobility into their workplaces. By enabling people to work off-site, space that would otherwise accommodate them can be ‘repurposed’ for other uses such as informal meeting or conferencing amenities. For the purposes of professional development and programme delivery, offices may also be provided with multi-use spaces adaptable to anything from small to large group learning or presentation sessions.

Workplace as brand experience

Top-tier companies often benefit from using space as an immersive brand expression. A branded workplace may involve planning and design strategies to receive customised brand elements, materials and finishes, and environmental graphics to reinforce the firm’s visual and cultural identity in the built space.

From old space to new: Leading a seamless transition

No matter how well-intended its purpose, change in the working environment – whether the result of a renovation, a move to an entirely new office, or a co-location or restacking initiative – can have a negative effect on operational efficiency if not managed effectively. The key to minimising the organisational/individual frictions that sometimes mar transitions from old to new environments is communication.

In collaboration with client management, human resources and facilities management, M Moser’s workplace design specialists have often made a valuable contribution to facilitating understanding and ‘buy-in’ among staff who will be affected by change. This is usually accomplished using various communications tools (including interviews, surveys, workshops, poster campaigns and other interactive exercises) that address the concerns of both stakeholders and staff focus groups.

As well as providing information that will aid design development, these exercises also invite participants to take ‘ownership’ of impending changes to their working environment. Sources of change-related friction are resolved or at least eased, and the accompanying risk of employee turnover, loss of critical institutional knowledge, eroded productivity and increased absenteeism, is reduced.

The trading room: an ergonomic and engineering challenge

The trading room is the heart of many financial sector workplaces, serving both as the ‘engine’ of a firm’s success and an expression of its strength in the marketplace. As such, they are among the most challenging spaces to design and execute.

Basic needs

The ideal trading room is a ‘barrier free’ environment, obstructing as little as possible the spontaneous movement and verbal and visual communication that are fundamental to routine trading activity. They are therefore best accommodated within floor plates that offer large column bay spacing and sufficient core-to-perimeter depth.

Furniture & IT

Within the room, bench style trading desks or positions in facing rows are provided for traders and other direct support staff. Delivered to each desktop via screen (or often, screens) is a constant flow of pricing and financial analytics, models and trends. Meanwhile, supplemental displays – frequently consisting of plasma screens attached to columns or suspended from the ceiling for maximised visibility – stream in continuous television news programming and market information. Supporting the trading room is the data centre
or equipment room, usually located within reasonably close proximity.

Engineering requirements

Not surprisingly, both the trading room and data centre present considerable engineering challenges in terms of floor loading, temperature control and supplemental cooling, and provision for uninterrupted power and emergency back-up. In many cases, total cooling and electrical capacity needs can be met by base building systems; but often, it is necessary for tenants to provide their own supplemental systems as needed.

Case study

A recent project for a US-based hedge fund highlights how M Moser’s integrated working method can streamline the creation of quality workplaces by using the best possible combination of global expertise for delivery of local initiatives.

Establishing a basic need

The project began when the client decided to establish a substantial office in London. An initial project brief was created based on the office’s operational functions, projected population, budget and timeframe parameters.

Discovering space options

At this stage, in cooperation with their London team, the client began the process of identifying a range of potential office spaces. The final choice fell to a 23000 sq-ft space – roughly ‘H’ shaped in plan – located within a modern building in close proximity to the City of London. At this stage, M Moser’s space planners and designers coordinated their efforts with the client in London and New York to create a more detailed picture of their needs and requirements and how they could be accommodated in the chosen space. As the project progressed, the dialogue expanded to include reviews of design options, branding approaches and other interactions.

Integrated project delivery: clarity, collaboration & value

Traditionally, creating a new or renovated workplace required an ongoing effort to orchestrate an array of separate contractors and consultants. By contrast, M Moser Associates integrates all the required expertise under a clear single point of project responsibility built around discovering and responding to client needs. This integrated project delivery (IPD) model enables direct communication with the project team and ensures that all the professionals involved work synchronously. This means fewer conflicts and expensive technical problems, and a final product that is fully consistent with the client’s vision.

Evolving the design collaboratively

Using the information gained, London team members collaborated with client representatives in New York to determine the best possible arrangement of departmental stacking and adjacencies within the new space. Engineers meanwhile worked with interior designers and IT specialists to ensure that heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, the lighting scheme and data systems complex would be suitable to purpose.

In the case of HVAC, only minimal modifications to the base building system were required. A requirement for using the client’s proprietary links and interfaces between the London and New York offices’ AV systems, however, required an intensive effort from M Moser’s IT specialists to both integrate and get working reliably. For the sake of convenience, the control same system was also integrated with the office’s air conditioning and lighting systems.

A workplace that supports business goals

In response to operational needs and the client’s working culture, the design included both open and enclosed spaces, the latter including flexible meeting rooms for both internal
and client-facing functions. Break-out spaces located along major circulation routes catered to less formal meetings and encouraged spontaneous discussion amongst staff members. Amenities within the office included a spacious pantry/canteen with kitchen, making this space also suitable for hosting functions and entertaining clients.

The ease of collaboration between M Moser team members in London and the client locally and in New York was of particular value in creating a consistent ‘brand environment’. While colours, finishes and textures of the London office conform to the firm’s global identity standards, variations in material and form were introduced to make the new location distinctive and appropriate within its setting.