Office facilities trends.

Capotescu, Sebastian ; Dumitrescu, Constantin Dan ; Zamfirescu, Nicolae 等

1. INTRODUCTION

One of the definitions for the facilities management provided by the International Facility Management Association (IFMA) is: Facility management is a profession that encompasses multiple disciplines to ensure functionality of the built environment by integrating people, places, processes and technology (Alexander, 1996).

The definition of facilities management provided by the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) is: "Facilities management is the integration of processes within an organization to maintain and develop the agreed services which support and improve the effectiveness of its primary activities".

Office facilities reflect the infrastructure and services that are needed in the office activities. The infrastructure means buildings, furniture and equipments of buildings as well as electrical and IT&C systems, hitting systems, air conditioning systems, elevators, etc.

2. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY

In post modern thinking, relationships of all kind -- i.e., between work and leisure -- are in a continuous fluctuation. In the agricultural society the fundaments were the land and the manpower. The industrial society was and is characterized by highly developed organizations which employed and employ human capital as machines and where the state was and is an important driving force. The information society was supported by technological developments and the more recently the knowledge society has fundaments in the information, in the knowledge, in intellectual capital and obviously, in people who participate to these different contexts.

Along with the technological evolution which automates the routines and the intellectual processes even, machines take over man's ancient role in the industrial society. It is now up to man to think, to create, to innovate, to plan, to undertake and, mainly, to take care of his own destiny. Complexity increases and man frees himself from a well known type of work, confronting the challenge of complexity, of the unknown. It is necessary to invest in facilities for social human development, so that the latter can remain aligned with, in terms of the evolution levels, the technological development, so that an effective transition towards the real knowledge age may occur.

The new model of knowledge economics points out to many striking consequences in the lives of individuals, which will be originated by changes that are already taking place; Some of them are cited bellow and on their own will be great motivators in the decision process of utilizing some kind of personal tool which might help the planning of one's life so as to strike a balance amongst the various existing dimensions in a complex world.

The process of work choice: individuals will choose the organizations they want to work for; they will offer their skills and their talents and not their curricula proving their experience and years of organizational loyalty.

Works: jobs will be displaced to make room for work; In the knowledge economics age it will become of common sense for an individual to work, to be involved in several projects, even being part of different organizations. We can already see the nongovernmental organizations as the cell of the new future entrepreneurial park structure. While one adds value to the business, the other will remain belonging to an organization; He will have "employability".

Values: They will be seen as a means of support and inspiration for the human growth and development; the individual will acknowledge if the organization or team which he intends to join is in alignment with his individual values. Healthy relationships, the competence for managing one's own life, one's contribution to the whole are all imperative values in the new society.

Leadership and Teems: One of the major transformations which begins to be noticed is the one from leaderships as a result of stipulating common purposes to the leadership for strengthening all, where the individual perspective only makes sense if it is subordinated to building a more dignified society, considering the collective environment to which each individual belongs: the nation, the world, the planet and life itself.

Integration between Work and Personal Life: Work will be seen from a different perspective in all individuals' lives; a transition from work for subsistence to work because one has talent and a personal mission will occur. Time will no longer be managed depending on circumstances, but rather will belong to each individual's own self-domain, who in turn will choose what makes more sense to his own life. Both work and leisure alike represent life. Workplaces, workspaces, leisure and shopping spaces are also changing; new electronic technologies have major contributions to make in a myriad of ways, in FM, i.e. "intelligent buildings".

3. THE IMPACT OF THE KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY ON THE OFFICE FACILITIES

In the industrial age companies start to have the offices in the production area, production capacities are the most important resources of the companies and the intellectual activities are not that important, being concentrated just for a few employees.

In the information age the production capacities lose the importance, the intellectual activities become more important, the offices are moving in the distinct spaces in the urban area to better serve the clients and the employees. In this way the big urban agglomeration that creates technical problems, environmental problems starts, develops and finally increases quite much the company administrations costs in one side and the living cost for people in other side. Companies build big office buildings, where the objectives are the productivity and the efficiency of the buildings used in order to allow as many employees as possible to work.

Now, in transition to the knowledge society, organizations become more focused on core business. Usually office buildings are developed by the specialized real estate developers and they start to externalize the support services.

Thanks to the IT&C, the intellectual routine activities are not necessary to be fulfilled by people and they are not conditioned by a physical place to work and practically people can work from home, while travelling, etc. Companies are searching for new ways of reducing the operational costs and start to encourage the people to work from other locations. They make projects in this direction, to grow the quality of products and services (Taroata, 2000). On the other hand people must be stimulated to innovate, to create, to take initiatives and must be motivated to be involved in the company's projects (Grigorescu, 2008). In this context work facilities tend to have more and more importance. The transformations consist in decreasing the number of the personal work places, these starting to be shared by many people; the work spaces are designed to serve the needs for specific activities.

For example, work spaces are designed to support as much as possible the communication needs in different ways and to stimulate the creative activities, individually or for the groups (Spath & Kern, 2005).

4. CASE STUDY--"THE VILLAGE OFFICE"

"The Village Office" is a space management concept developed by the SAMAS Group. Samas is a leading international supplier of furniture and chairs with strong brands, more than 20 companies and production facilities in Europe and an extensive dealer network. The project consists of the transformation of the SAMAS head office from Netherlands, in the completely revitalized office. The social structures of a village have been reflected and as many elements as possible from daily life have found a place there (Jones & Jowett, 1988). The concept of non private work place was applied here. Some places were designed as common spaces for some particular departments like accounting and product marketing, generous common spaces as piazza for the all kind of meetings and interactions, special places for concentrations, team work in two or more people, different spaces for communications, individual and group creativity in a conventional or not conventional ambient. I.e., one of the spaces is organized as a living space with sofas, carpets and fireplace to be stimulating for someone in some special moments, as stimuli for a more intimate place.

There also are entertainment and art spaces like a climbing whole, an auditorium space completely equipped with multimedia systems, etc., shortly a "Village" where people feel at home and can meet each other formally and informally, where they have access to everything they need, from the workplace to a climbing wall and from conference room to lounge chairs.

5. OFFICE FACILITIES TRENDS

The office buildings are built by the real estate developers. Usually the users are renters. The office facilities services are external, outsourced services.

The employees are encouraged to work also from other places not just in the organization's place. Increasing the number of jobs that can be done from home includes living in small scale settlements with close social relations and in the nature harmony. Therefore it is necessary to develop office facilities services for home workers. The concept of non personal territorial work place called hot desk or sharing desk has appeared.

People commitment for the employers is decreasing and the percentage of people that are working in many projects, including different companies as freelancers is increasing. People are more orientated to develop vision and mission themselves according to their vocations or callings and they do not submit and are not conditioned by the organizations just for subsistence. Therefore the organizations develop spaces and facilities that motivate the people, the customers and the employees to stay closer to them and to share their vision. Because the relationships between work and leisure are in a continuous flow, facility products and services to serve this situation are developed.

6. CONCLUSIONS

The knowledge society's characteristics create important premises to cause radical transformations in the life style that creates needs for transformations of the office facilities. In this context the office facilities are transforming in order to respond of multiple complex proposals as: to stimulate the innovation, creativity and initiatives; to create conditions for development and sharing common visions and missions; to increase the organizational commitment; to generally improve the level of the life quality; to improve the organizational efficiency and to reduce the environmental impact.

The paper presents relevant aspects of a project designed and executed to equip office facilities.

The facility is referenced with and assimilated to the term of highly flexible entity, adapted to the diverse customers' needs.

At the same time type designed elements of the facilities' structures may constitute ground structures dimensioned according to customers' requirements.

The approach of the term of office facilities supposes to alter the term of leadership taking into consideration that the diverse manufacturing will be done using elements specific to type designed facilities.

As a conclusion the assimilation of facilities as ground management elements assures a manufacturing cost reduction.

7. REFERENCES

Alexander, K. (1996). Facilities Management: Theory and Practice, E&FN Spon Publishing, London

Grigorescu, A. (2008). The Project Management Practice, Uranus Publishing, Bucharest

Jones, C. & Jowett, V. (1998). Managing Facilities, Butterworth- Heinemann Publishing, Oxford

Taroata, A. (2000). Management and Engineering of Productions Systems, Solness Publishing, Timisoara

Spath, D. & Kern, P. (2005). Push for the Future, better performance in innovative working environments, "OFFICE 21", Fraunhofer-Institut fur Arbeitswirtschaft und Organization IAO, Stuttgart