We’ve no doubt you’ve heard of artificial intelligence (AI). In fact, AI seems to be playing a role in practically every part of our everyday lives e.g. from chat bots on websites to face ID to unlock phones, personalisation of social media feeds, spelling and grammar checking, google search, digital voice assistants like Siri and Alexa, smart home devices, bank security, study aids and medical diagnosis, AI is everywhere. It’s therefore little wonder that AI can also help to shape office design by playing an important part in data analysis. In this article we look at the office design benefits that come from AI as well as AI’s limitations.
How Can AI Be Used In Office Design?
AI is being used in a variety of ways to help to inform and improve office design by providing the power to analyse vast quantities of data, optimising the use of office space and office layouts based on staff usage; automating lighting, temperature and ventilation controls based on individual staff preferences and real-time data based on time of day and occupancy levels, all with the overall aim of increasing staff productivity and health and wellbeing.
Optimising Layout For Better Usage
Office space can be an expensive commodity, especially in prime locations like London. Given this, it’s important to ensure that available office space is used to its maximum advantage and to understand how staff use office space to identify areas which are under or overused so that businesses can make informed decisions on how to redesign office space to optimise layout for better usage.
This is especially significant given XY Sense’s insights into “Workplace Utilization” which shows that in Q4 2023, workplace use in the UK was just 53% and that most offices have far more individual workstations than are needed to meet the number of staff going into the office with “28% of decks are never used, 51% are occupied for less than one hour per day and just 12% are used for more than 5 hours per day.”
By monitoring desk, meeting room and break out area usage and tracking staff movement AI can analyse how space is used and by whom and identify high traffic areas and areas which are underused to suggest flow and layout improvements. It can help to ensure office space is tailored specifically towards how a business and staff occupy and utilise that space. whether its adding more quiet spaces to provide areas for private work or designing additional break out areas to provide collaborative spaces for teams to get together or for individual staff to step away from their desk to take a break.
Enhancing Collaboration
Teamwork and collaboration play a vital role in many businesses, so while privacy and quiet office spaces are important so too are office layouts that allow staff to come together to collaborate. Getting that right balance can be especially difficult in workplaces where space is at a premium but it’s important to find the mix of collaborative and private office space that will best work for your business and your staff.
AI can look at your available office space and recommend optimal office layouts that will encourage teamwork by placing teams in close proximity to each other based on their need for collaboration while ensuring that quiet spaces are also available where and when required. AI can also be used to take meeting room bookings and provide ways in which remote employees can more easily communicate and collaborate with staff in the office.
Creating Realistic Visuals
AI can be used to generate highly realistic office space models and renders allowing businesses to get a much better feel for what the final office design will look like and to “experience the space” before any work actually begins. AI renders tend to be far more photo realistic than traditional office models and images as they can include more real world textures, lighting effects and shadows. This added level of detail can help businesses to visualise the final product more effectively to aid in the process of deciding which design will best meet their businesses and staff needs.
AI can also produce simulations and virtual tours of an office design allowing office design professionals and businesses to evaluate how a design will perform in the real world. It can identify areas that are not being used effectively and suggest how they can be better used or look at potential congestion points where there may be high footfall and find solutions to improve traffic flow and minimise disruptions. AI can also be used to identify meeting spaces which are poorly located or too small to be effective and provide alternative solutions. It is also able to identify areas where noise may be problematic allowing designs to be changed to tackle acoustic problems before they become a health and wellbeing issue.
Being able to predict and see issues in an design before any work begins on site can help to reduce future problems down the line and assist in ensuring that the final office design will be practical and fully meet business objectives and staff needs.
Producing Generative and Predictive Office Designs
With AI a wider range of office design solutions can be more easily produced allowing for the exploration of different design options and ideas and allowing new ideas to be quickly and easily evaluated and accepted or discarded.
AI analysis of historical office usage data to predict short- and longer-term office space requirements can allow businesses to design spaces that can be adapted to flexibly accommodate evolving business and employee needs, changing work processes and growth. By employing AI in this capacity office designs are more likely to continue to meet a business’s needs in the long term and it’s less likely that repeated adjustments will need to be made to the office design as the business, its processes and staff change.
Integrating Employee Feedback
When it comes to office design, gathering employee feedback has always been important. Integrating feedback from employees into any design plans to produce a user-centric office design enables companies to better understand their employees needs leading to an office designed to enhance productivity and health and wellbeing which in turn can boost employee morale and satisfaction which is beneficial to both businesses and employees.
This is backed up by research by the University of New South Wales who looked at “Designing an office worth going back to” and found that “prioritising user experience, fine-tuning work spaces to support user needs and designing for health and wellbeing will deliver higher levels of satisfaction, perceived productivity and creativity” in the workplace.
A paper on “User-focused office renovation: a review into user satisfaction and the potential for improvement” which evaluated the “user-focussed“ design and refurbishment of offices spaces found that “users’ needs and the physical and psychological factors affecting user satisfaction, as input to office renovation projects” and found a number of factors increased user satisfaction.
“The Employee Experience: Designing Workplaces from User Research” by Arch Daily also endorses the idea that office design can be shaped from user experience to design office spaces that don’t just meet the usual metrics of cost per square foot, occupancy rates and seat ratio but also look to ways of addressing problems and pain points as well as improving job satisfaction.
Gathering employee feedback can be difficult and it takes time to process and interpret large quantities of data. AI can provide a timely and efficient way to do this, allowing companies to utilise employee data and more easily make user-centric data-driven decisions when looking to design their office space.
Designing For Health and Wellbeing
Health and wellbeing play a vital role in the modern office. It’s therefore important that it’s at the core of today’s office design decisions.
AI can be used to help guide and improve employee health and wellbeing in office design in a variety of ways including personalising or adjusting a range of environmental factors such as temperature and light. AI sensors can be installed to monitor air quality, humidity, and noise levels in real time and to adjust or highlight issues to be addressed to ensure a continued comfortable work environment.
AI can also provide recommendations when looking for the right, ergonomic office furniture for a specific office space while factoring in any constraints and business needs alongside staff needs and health and wellbeing. AI also makes it easier to find office furniture that can be adapted or reconfigured to meet future needs such as moveable partitioning or reconfigurable furniture that can be adapted and expanded when a business is looking to grow and develop.
Choosing Materials For Sustainability
Given the continuing drive towards net zero, sustainable office design and refurbishment remains a major value driver for many businesses and landlords. Many companies are either looking for sustainable office space or are looking to redesign their current space to be more sustainable to reduce their environmental impact, make savings, and improve employee productivity and health and wellbeing.
Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL), a real estate services company carried out a Future of Work Survey and found that “74% of the companies surveyed, represented by 1,095 senior corporate real estate decision makers across 13 countries, are likely to pay a premium for green credentials, with 56% planning to do so by 2025.” 80% of companies surveyed also said their employees “will increasingly expect the workplace to have a positive impact on the environment” while 75% said the same about a positive impact on society.
A later JLL Future of Work Survey found that “68% of organizations anticipate increased spending on sustainability performance in the next five years, with 72% saying they will pay a premium to only occupy spaces with leading sustainability and green credentials. Corporates are increasingly setting ambitious sustainability targets tied to their real estate footprint through commitments such as the science-based target initiative (SBTi) or the science-led WELL certification for healthy buildings.”
According to Cognizant “Sustainability spending is set to surge in the UK“. They say “UK businesses are doubling down on sustainability investment.” A study of 3,000 executives globally, including 250 in the UK, conducted with Oxford Economics, predicted that UK business sustainability spending will grow “260% between 2018 and 2030, and 13% year-over-year between 2025 and 2030.”
CIM, a property analytics software firm found that in a survey of 200 UK directors and other senior staff “of those surveyed the majority are looking for sustainable office space.” CIM’s report went onto highlight that 55% “expected” that landlords would make efforts to ensure their office space reached net zero” and 53% “wanted to reduce their day-to-day operational and energy costs, and this would also significantly impact their choice of office space.” 89% considered net zero as an increasingly important part of employee acquisition and retention. Only 6% said they would be unwilling to pay more.
An article by CNBC “Green’ offices in London are over 25% more expensive. But a modern workforce now expects it” explains that many companies want to move to office space with BREEAM and LEED “green credentials” and the lack of “sustainable” office space is driving up the cost. As a consequence businesses are willing to pay for London office space that meets green standards even though green offices are 25% more expensive.
During the office design process AI can quickly compare and analyse large datasets of material information on the environmental impact of various different building materials by considering factors such as the lifecycle of the product, its recycled content, its carbon emissions, long-term durability and cost-effectiveness of materials and assist in choosing the right sustainable materials to provide the most eco-friendly options. AI can balance this against business specific needs, availability and cost to make choices that align with a business’s sustainability goals and its financial constraints. AI can also be used to more accurately predict the materials that will be needed for an office design project ensuring project cost effectiveness and reducing waste.
Improving Energy Efficiency
A sustainable office also needs to be energy efficient.
According to the Green Journal “lighting accounts for .. as much as 35% of the average business’s electricity consumption.” It’s therefore vital that when it comes to the design of the office layout that natural light should be used as much as possible. Desks should be strategically placed to take advantage of windows and skylights, where ever possible. AI can look at the best placement of desks to maximise the available lighting in any office layout.
AI smart building management systems can be implemented to monitor, analyse, and manage energy consumption within an office. Using this data energy inefficiencies can be identified and usage fine-tuned ensuring that lighting, heating, and ventilation are used only when required e.g. they are turned off out of hours as well as in areas which are unoccupied or not being used. To achieve maximum energy efficiency Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) can be used to make automatic changes based on real-time data e.g. Air Conditioning, Heating and Refrigeration the News says “automatic optimization of HVAC systems typically increases energy efficiency by an additional 10 to 25 percent over just installing new equipment.”
Predictive Maintenance
AI can play a role in the on-going maintenance of an office space and building.
It can be used to monitor and analyse data from equipment and building systems such as HVAC and lighting systems, for inefficiencies, anomalies and signs of wear and tear and predict potential equipment issues and failures such as increased energy consumption and probable maintenance needs. Early warning alerts can be generated before small problems become major issues, ensuring the office space remains fully functioning and comfortable for staff while minimising downtime and repair costs.
Deloitte’s “Predictive Maintenance – Taking pro-active measures based on advanced data analytics to predict and avoid machine failure” paper states that “on average, predictive maintenance increases productivity by 25%, reduces breakdowns by 70% and lowers maintenance costs by 25%.” The paper goes onto say that “internal Deloitte analyses have concluded that material cost savings amount to 5 to 10% on average. Equipment uptime increases by 10 to 20%. Overall maintenance costs are reduced by 5 to 10% and maintenance planning time is even reduced by 20 to 50%.”
Limitations of AI
AI can help to shape office design and office refurbishments and with it comes many benefits especially around the analysis of large quantities of data which would, in the past, have been difficult to utilise in a timely manner, however it’s important to recognise that AI also brings with it limitations.
AI can easily outperform people at certain tasks however it falls down in other areas. AI is only as good as the data it’s fed e.g. if the data itself is biased i.e. it may under represent some people’s needs, it may skew its interpretation of the data which means that the office designs that result won’t cater to diverse needs but instead focus on a small proportion of overall staff requirements.
If the data is too general, it will struggle to suggest ideas or refine results that are specific to the needs of the business and staff instead producing generic layouts that are found in other workplaces. It may also struggle to understand workflow, and the need for human interaction as well as workplace comfort which won’t allow for the best design decisions.
AI also lacks the personal touch. This also comes from being limited by the data that it relies on. It can struggle to generate innovative office designs or to incorporate new ideas that are different from “the norm” which can restrict its ability to find inspiration or to work creatively to create designs. Unlike humans who can adapt to different needs and employ empathy to when looking at various situations AI lacks this ability. Although AI is constantly learning it can also take time for it to process new ways of thinking.
Ensuring that AI systems are fed the latest data can also be a concern e.g. it’s vital that the latest building and fitout regulations are entered otherwise AI will be working to old information could potentially compromise any design work.
With AI systems needing to be fed large quantities of data, employee data privacy can also be a concern. Employees may also be reluctant to participate in any process which requires them to provide data that they feel is personal or which identifies them which may result in lower data samples which can skew results to only those who have been happy to provide information.
Clearly AI is an important tool that can provide many benefits, and as AI technology evolves so too will the use of AI in office design and in the integration of smart AI controls and technology within buildings and office spaces, but it is important to strike the right balance between AI and human insight. The experience and creativity of office designers who provide essential evaluation, the modification of designs, and who make the ultimate decision on designs to ensure the final product produced is practical and meets specific business and staff requirements will continue to remain indispensable for a long time to come.
JBH Refurbishments, Experts In Office Design and Refurbishment
JBH Refurbishments are a cat a and cat b fit out contractor and have over 30+ years experience in Kent and London office design, office refurbishments and fit outs. We can provide the right expertise for your Kent or London office refurbishment. We understand what’s required to carry out an office refurbishment.
From your brief, to putting together a project plan, to developing your office design and layout to delivering your office fit out JBH Refurbishments will provide the right expertise for your project providing peace of mind. You can contact us on 0333 207 0339 or via our contact page or by calling us on 0333 207 0339 today for a free on-site consultation.
