The Property and Facilities Division (P&F) from the University of Queensland (UQ) engaged Amicus Technology to transform their culture and environment from a traditional approach to an agile way of working to enable greater flexibility, improved collaboration, and utilisation of the space.
Their vision was to create a streamlined, interactive, and efficient workplace incorporating easy to use technology to enable greater flexibility, and collaboration across the P&F and Finance divisions. This change was driven by utilisation. Space is at a premium across the University and in high demand, yet it was unclear how this space was being used and what systems and processes could be put in place for more effective utilisation.
P&F wanted to investigate how they could re-invest in space, use it more wisely to increase the quality of the estate and prevent the need to build new space. P&F also wanted to understand how their spaces are used and how they can be fine-tuned to optimise utilisation in this new way of working. The new space needed to set the benchmark and showcase the new agile working approach with the aim of replicating it across campus.
The refurbishment of P&F’s offices was coordinated as a result of another project with a specific timeframe and P&F wanted to take advantage of this opportunity to improve and monitor utilisation of the office space and introducing agile ways of working.
There are a number of considerations involved in agile working such as ensuring there is workspaces available for all staff to utilise, so P&F needed advice on the right technology solutions to support the transition to a hybrid way of working. Kevin O’Sullivan, The Director of Campus Operations for P&F at UQ engaged Amicus to provide direction and develop a workplace technology strategy for a flexible, collaborative, and digital environment.
Amicus began by conducting research, and then commenced leadership workshops, and interviews with key stakeholders. This led to identifying the gaps, clarifying their direction and vision then fashioning a strategy brief accompanied with a list of technology recommendations to achieve their vision. Throughout this process, ongoing collaboration and feedback were key to informing the solutions that were selected and implemented.
Following the delivery of the strategy brief, P&F engaged Amicus to provide a Workplace Management system for desk booking and a Space Analytics solution to provide real-time data analytics and valuable data-driven real estate insights.
Being agile is a modern way of working, and staff wanted to understand how their workspace would cater to it. They wanted to know how it would work, how they would secure a desk, and if there would be a space to work when they travelled into the office. To address this problem, Amicus proposed the workspace booking system developed by Condeco, the global leader in enterprise-level workspace management solutions. Condeco’s scheduling software is designed to equip employees with the right tools to help them best manage their flexible workday. The system allows employees to easily find and reserve the spaces they need for their day of work and have confidence that it will be ready once they arrive.
Amicus are Condeco’s leading partner in Asia Pacific and worked closely with UQ’s P&F and ITS teams along with Condeco to successfully deploy the solution prior to the opening of the new workspace on Prentice Level 5. As the Condeco solution has been implemented, it has successfully connected P&F employees to the spaces they want, on mobile, on the web, or through Microsoft Outlook. Notably, P&F staff have found the mobile app intuitive to use, booking a space with ease.
Moving to agile working was a significant change for P&F. It was imperative to gather data to support this initiative, and identify the positive outcomes, the challenges and potential improvements. Amicus partnered with XY Sense, a Melbourne-based technology startup, which offers a new kind of workplace occupancy sensor that uses the power of AI to help organisations better plan and use office space. XY Sense provides the most advanced AI sensor solution on the market with analytics that delivers actionable workplace recommendations at the click of a button.
On Level 5 of the Prentice building, sensors were mounted on the ceiling in all meeting spaces, communal areas and in the open desk area. This allows P&F to understand workplace occupancy and paths of movement in real-time – every 2 seconds with positional accuracy to within 1 foot. They can now understand time and floor plan utilisation, time spent in the office, the number of workstations and active users and the utilisation levels of specific areas around the office.
The P&F space planning team can monitor live occupancy views or dive into a library of configurable dashboards on floor and desk utilisation, meeting room occupancy analytics, neighbourhood balancing and team space capacity planning. Management can now understand current utilisation using the neighbourhood balancing and forecasting dashboard to simulate potential changes they could make to increase the capacity of the space by 10 people.
Occupancy and utilisation data enables fine tuning of the workspace, technology and behaviour to create a high functioning, vibrant office that continues to deliver great experiences now and, in the future. The P&F team has already identified that the open collaboration booths are not being used frequently and may consider replacing these with phone booths to provide a more private space to work.
Below is an example of an active XY dashboard. Data has been collected using the XY sense ceiling mount.
The implementation of the two solutions has supported the backbone of P&F’s cultural change. Whilst cultural transformation is a long-term process, faculty staff now have the confidence and freedom to work flexibly and explore a range of spaces. This new way of working has visibly enhanced connections and collaboration across different divisions, directly improving lines of communication and working relationships. Due to the project’s success, P&F are exploring plans to expand this new way of working to other areas of UQ.
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