The Essential Design Element for Any Office Space  

Introduction

There are 86 billion square feet of commercial office space in the United States. The business of these offices is vast in scope: law, advertising, government, finance, and manufacturing. The legacy of these offices ranges from the most established banking firms to budding e-Commerce companies. Despite these wide variations in business scope and organizational structure, the purpose of every square foot of commercial office space is the same—facilitating communication and serving as a place where work can be accomplished and organizational needs met.

While the purpose of an office space may be clearly defined, office space design remains, by necessity, much more fluid. Businesses trying to succeed are forced to constantly change and adapt in the fast-paced and dynamic arena of corporate competition. The design of the office space must transition, in order for the space to remain relevant and functional for new organizational needs.

Office design today aims to create spaces that are flexible and efficient, and work environments that are comfortable and productive.

Transition of Office Space Design

In the 1960s, the number of available office jobs was growing rapidly as the American economy shifted from agrarian, to industrial, to office buildings and knowledge workers. Most office spaces were carbon copies of the offices across the hall or down the street. Advertising agencies were indeterminable in appearance from legal offices. The design template of the time was bland and neutral. Office spaces were mostly private, their sizes defined by seniority and clout with cookie cutter precision. The office design reinforced the rigid formality of the business world. Walls and doors prevailed. Communication was carried out in memos. Employee interaction occurred in planned meetings with agendas. Typewriters and telephones were hot technologies whose weight and wires kept employees tethered to their desks. Corporate cultures were functional, framed by the 9-5 workday, and intensely loyal. People typically remained with the same company until retirement.

Office space design in the 21st century must accommodate a very different corporate landscape. Information technologies like mobile phones, laptop computers, and the Internet have created an atmosphere where a person’s office is really wherever that person happens to be, anywhere in the world, and at any time, frequently available 24/7. Traveling to the office is no longer required to get work done.

The office building has become a flagship communicative hub reinforcing corporate culture, collaboration, and development. Office space design increasingly incorporates elements of branding and corporate identity into a structure with colors, credos, and furnishings. Open office spaces, atria, and cafeterias encourage informal communication between teammates that is invaluable for keeping people informed and generating ideas. Communication frequently occurs face-to-face or over cyberspace. AV presentations, intercontinental teleconference calls, e-mails, and text messages are important mediums that the office space must be able to accommodate. Office buildings provide a medium to communicate corporate identity and brand. Office design builds bridges between employees, facilitating communication, information transfer, and interpersonal collaboration.

The popularity of rigid private-office-heavy floor plans has waned in favor of highly adaptable, partitioned spaces with modular office furniture systems. This new design allows spaces to be quickly and easily reorganized to match changes in corporate strategies and initiatives. Individual cubicles merge to create a collaborative team environment. Longer tables and whiteboards are partitioned off to quickly create project rooms or other needed conference areas. The International Facilities Management Association (IFMA) quoted the current inter-corporate churn rate at 41%, which means that almost half of the employees in an office space are physically moved to a different location within the same company every year.

Ensure that the office space will be able to accommodate changing organizational needs and floor plans by including a reconfigurable lighting control system in the design. Reconfigurable lighting control systems easily support a space that may be a conference room today and a team environment tomorrow.

Perhaps the most fundamental difference between the organizational needs of 1960 and today is the fierce competition to hire and retain quality employees. Talent is viewed as the most scarce and valuable resource that a company can obtain. Subsequently, employees’ salaries and benefits are by far the largest expense that an office building incurs. Office spaces are tasked to provide productive and interactive work environments, and to serve as tools for employee comfort, satisfaction, and retention. It is essential that the design of the office space support these efforts, simultaneously communicating to employees that they are important and valued by the firm.

Amidst the tumult of intense competition, quick strike and counterstrike initiatives, continuous reorganization, and a team roster that is constantly in flux, concrete and glass provide the semblance of stability, purpose, and success. The employees and floor plans will change, that is the nature of business. The office building will stand, that is the nature of architecture.

Benefit from the Building

Keeping an office building capable of supporting organizational needs is an essential element of good business, underscored by the fact that, for many companies, the physical building is the most expensive capital asset on the balance sheet. In fact, the significant investment required to construct, operate, maintain, and repair an office building (an investment that often represents between 10-20% of a company’s annual revenue) creates a strong demand from building owners and shareholders to pinch every last benefit out of the built environment. “Failure to wring every benefit out of the most expensive capital asset most companies have would not be countenanced in any other aspect of corporate life” (Seiler, John A. 1984. Architecture at Work. “Harvard Business Review,” September/October, 120).

Reducing the amount of money required to operate the building can significantly affect the bottom line and is often easily accomplished by improving the efficiency of various building systems, like lighting, heating, or cooling. But opportunities to squeeze the maximum benefit from a building asset exist beyond improving its operational efficiencies. Buildings can be designed to create value for the company, one square foot at a time.

Efficiency vs. Value

Efficiency is highly quantitative. It describes the cost of producing something—in energy, time, money—in a manner that gets more of something for less. To create system efficiencies, the current performance of the lighting system or HVAC system must be examined and improved. Achieving better system efficiency will reduce operational expenses, but a more efficient building is not necessarily a better place to work. The impact of system efficiency on the office environment depends upon the methods employed to achieve it.

Value is a relative term that provides a comparison for buildings and the ways they are designed. The value of an office building to an organization can describe the cost/square foot, productive capacity, sustainability, and its overall ability to facilitate communication and meet organizational needs. An office space’s value is defined by whether it creates an enjoyable, productive work environment, while sending the right corporate message to clients and employees.

Multiple methods for achieving greater system efficiencies have been employed over the years. While each of the following was successful in reducing operational expenses, the value of the space was damaged as a direct result of its more efficient design.

HVAC Efficiency

Originally, windows provided the climate control in buildings. With the introduction of HVAC systems, fewer windows were designed into commercial projects, reducing the potential of leaks and thermal transmittance. This self-contained environment allowed buildings to heat and cool themselves more efficiently, without being forced to accommodate the influence of outdoor elements. Improved HVAC efficiency was achieved, but it cost the commercial space the presence of daylight and outdoor views.

In office buildings, the presence of daylight and views has been linked to improved employee mood, motivation, satisfaction, health, and productivity. In European commercial buildings, the access to daylight and the connection to the outdoors is a fundamental design element that has been manifested in the construction doctrine “no employee office area can exist more than 6 meters away from a window.” In the United States, the incorporation of daylight and views is recognized by the LEED™ (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) rating system as an element of sustainable design, enhancing the sustainability of the space by making it a more productive and healthy environment for building occupants.

Lighting control equips buildings to operate more efficiently and adds value to the floor space by making it a healthier and more productive place to work.

An office space with few windows may have a lower heating bill, but it may also have higher absenteeism and turnover ratios, less healthy employees who are less excited to come to work every day and are less productive when they get there. This space is efficient, but its value to the organization and its ability to support organizational needs is low.

Electricity Use in Office Buildings In a typical office building, lighting consumes more electricity than heating or cooling systems.

Space Efficiency

Rent is another big expense for office buildings. Space equals money, as buildings are charged dollars for every square foot. The pursuit of space efficiency aims to improve how well a building is using the space it is paying for to create revenue for the company. Studies of sales organizations, accounting firms, consulting firms and others concluded that in many office environments an employee’s desk may be unoccupied 60% of the year.

The discovery of the empty, yet expensive, workspaces drove the development of the organizational concepts: hot-desking and desk pooling. The term hot-desking is borrowed from the Naval term “hot-bunking,” which is a practice on submarines where one cot is used by multiple sailors—one after the other. Hot-desking is a strategy that aims to rotate employees in and out of community desks so efficiently that the chair is reoccupied before it has time to cool down. Desk pooling provides employees who are normally elsewhere with a group of standard and unpersonalized desks to use during those rare visits to the office. The desk is equipped with all usual accouterments: stapler, phone, power for laptop and an Internet link. But it is devoid of personalized touches and an everyday owner.

The reaction to the loss of a personal office space was negative across the board. Employees, even those who do not spend much time at their desk, associate their workstations with feelings of importance, security, and ownership. In the 21st century, office spaces have become more important than functional spaces; they provide a sense of identity and represent, in square feet and ergonomic furniture, an investment in the individual by the company.

Hot-desking and desk pooling increased the space efficiency of the building. They also generally upset the company’s most valuable asset (its employees), reduced productivity, and communicated to the workforce that their contributions were minimal and their importance marginal.

Achieve Efficiency and Add Value with Lighting Control

Improving system efficiencies can negatively affect the value of a space, but efficiency and value are not mutually exclusive. Opportunities exist to create system efficiency, and at the same time, make an office space more flexible, productive, healthy, and valuable to an organization.

One such opportunity exists in the design of the building’s lighting system—or, more specifically, the design of the building’s lighting control system. The lighting control system specified in a building determines how occupants are able to use the lights in the space. In the most minimal capacity, light control allows lights to be switched on/off either independently or in larger groups. Dimming technologies allow light fixtures to provide a range of light output—often ranging from 1 or 10% to the full 100%. Lights can be controlled manually with a handheld remote or from wall stations, or programmed to automatically turn on and off at certain times or when rooms are empty. Light control can even be preset to recall specific light levels—much like the presets programmed into a car radio—based on the activities in the space. Light controls enable a building to save energy and allow employees to select a comfortable light level that is best suited to their tasks.

Lighting systems represent a significant operational expense. Today, more electricity is used to light a typical building than is used to heat, cool, secure, or otherwise operate the structure. It is estimated that roughly 10% of all of the electricity consumed in the United States is used to light commercial buildings and, in 2005, that electricity cost Corporate America over $7 billion.

Rising energy costs have spurred a re-examination of how commercial spaces are using their kilowatt-hours. Systems designed to provide more light than necessary, minimal light control, and few light level options have been identified as three reasons why the lighting bills are unnecessarily high.

Design office spaces to be able to provide unique lighting levels to match individual preferences and tasks.

While the presence of light is essential for an office space to be functional, lighting systems are often designed to provide more light than necessary for typical office tasks. The Illuminating Engineering Society of North America (IESNA) recommends that the office building should be equipped to provide between 30-50 footcandles on a workspace. Fluorescent lamps are highly efficient and currently the industry standard in commercial construction. However, as fluorescent lamps age, their light output diminishes. Lamp output is also reduced when the lamps become dusty and dirty. To ensure that there is always enough light present in the office space, many lighting systems are designed to compensate for the diminished output and, subsequently, regularly provide more light than is needed.

Lighting control can be a design tool that promotes space flexibility and energy savings. Incorporating only the most basic or minimal light control on a project locks the building’s lighting resource into a rigid and uncompromising structure that wastes energy as unused lights are kept on. For example, in private offices light switches are often placed conveniently near the door. This switch location makes it easier for employees to turn the lights off before they leave their office space, saving energy and money. In the shift from private office spaces to open office spaces, switches now control large groups of lights located over desks that may be vacant for a significant portion of the day. A lighting control system that ties 20 light fixtures to one light switch unnecessarily wastes energy by keeping all of the lights on, even if only half of the people are in their seats.

Beyond the operational expense of keeping overhead lights on when the desk is empty and providing more light than necessary on the workspace, providing no available light range between 100% and off can unnecessarily tax the human element of the office. Too much light exposure has adverse affects on people’s health, mood, and performance. The squinting and strange postures employees strike to avoid glare and unnecessarily bright conditions cause headaches, fatigue, and muscle aches.

Although the reactions to the wrong light level may be fairly routine, the light levels considered right and wrong differ from person to person. Health conditions, preferences, age, and task are factors that combine to create the unique visual environments ideal for each individual employee. Providing inappropriate lighting levels in the workplace have been linked with productivity losses, reduced attention spans, and dissatisfaction. Lighting systems in office spaces can be easily designed to match employee preferences by incorporating dimming technologies in the overhead lights. This improved controllability has been credited with improving individual employee productivity 4-7%, reducing eyestrain, and improving worker satisfaction.

Incorporating more lighting control and offering a wider range of light levels throughout the office space saves energy, improving the efficiency of the lighting system, and adds value to the space by making it a more comfortable and productive place to work. Designing lighting control into an organizational space simultaneously supports environmental interests and sustainable design guidelines, equips the building to work smarter and be more profitable, and accommodates the company’s most valuable asset.

Lighting Control Strategies

The key to achieving the best fit between an office building and its lighting control system is to first determine how the space should function and how it will be used, then identify which lighting control strategy delivers the functionality that supports the intent of the space. Each different lighting control strategy offers a unique blend of energy savings potential and controllability. Five strategies popularly employed in office buildings are: tuning, occupancy sensing, daylight harvesting, personal control, and preset control.

Tuning is a strategy that uniformly lowers the high-end light level available throughout a space or building. Instead of switching fluorescent lights between 100% on and off, tuning lowers the high-end light level to 90%, for example, so lights switch between 90% and off. This strategy provides energy savings to the building every time the lights are turned on, automatically reducing the amount of electricity used for lighting by 10%. Tuning is often employed in corridors, hallways, stairwells and other areas of the floor plate where lights are constantly on, but occupants do not require a high level of personalized control for task or comfort.

Lighting control strategies need to support sustainable design, improve building efficiency, and accommodate the individual.

Occupancy sensing is a lighting control strategy that equips a building to turn lights off when rooms are empty. Occupancy sensing can create an average energy savings of between 25-40% and is typically employed in private offices and ancillary areas like copy rooms, kitchenettes, and bathrooms, where occupancy is sporadic.

Daylight harvesting balances the electric light and natural light in a space, automatically lowering electric light levels when daylight is present and increasing electric light levels in a space as daylight wanes. Daylight harvesting saves energy by using electric light as a complement to available daylight and protects the visual ergonomics of the space by ensuring that the appropriate amount of light is always present at the desktop. Daylight harvesting has been credited with reducing lighting energy consumption by almost 40% and can be incorporated into any office area that receives daylight exposure.

Personal control allows employees to select their own overhead light level and modify the light level throughout the day. Personal control gives employees the option to turn their overhead lights on, off, or to select a light level in between. This light control strategy has been credited with lighting energy savings of over 60% and is often applied in open office areas, private offices, and team environments.

Preset control provides a space with different pre-selected lighting scenarios. For example, a conference room wall station may be marked AV presentation, Meeting, Cleaning, and Off. Each of these scenarios is tied to a different light setting in the room. The AV presentation button lowers the light levels to accommodate the AV technology and makes it easier for people to see the screen. The meeting button engages overhead lights at a level that is on, but less intense than 100%, perhaps 75%. Cleaning provides 100% light so that staff can see dust and dirt. This lighting control strategy is most beneficial in areas that host many different employees for numerous types of tasks. Preset control makes it easier for the space to best fit the needs of the group, without being prohibitively difficult to use.

Incorporating the appropriate lighting control strategy in commercial buildings improves system efficiency and adds value to the space, but lighting control systems are able to further support office space design. Lighting control systems are available that provide tuning, occupancy sensing, daylight harvesting, personal control and preset control in a package that is easy to reconfigure, easy to maintain, easy to understand and use.

These features ensure that a system that was once the best fit for the office design will continue to fit organizational needs, even as those needs change.

The new generation of lighting control system provides the flexibility to control a single fixture, an entire floor, or an entire building or campus.

Adaptable Lighting Control Systems

As office buildings mature the companies within them develop—departments are added and moved, floor plans are reconfigured, and neighboring structures are built that modify the daylight available to the office space. Traditionally, lighting control systems have been designed and installed to fit the existing office building layout. These lighting control systems could not adapt to the inevitable changes, and so offered limited long-term value to the building. In recent years, first-generation addressable dimming ballasts have solved flexibility issues, but they have been even more complicated to commission, and they have not adapted easily to daylighting. Additionally, when these ballasts fail they need to be re-commissioned. However, a new generation of lighting control systems is able to adapt, mirroring floor plan modifications and meeting evolving organizational needs efficiently.

The Technology

The technology and capabilities of this new generation is much more sophisticated, but the design is even simpler. The lighting system of entire floors—whole buildings—can be equipped to provide tuning, occupancy sensing, daylight harvesting, personal control and preset control with only a few key components. The fundamental components for a highly efficient and adaptable fluorescent lighting control system are:

• A new generation of multi-input addressable dimming ballast
• Simple, low-voltage sensors
• Occupancy sensors
• Daylight sensors
• IR receivers with remotes
• Wallstations
• A wireless handheld programmer

The new generation of multi-input addressable dimming ballasts

Multi-input addressable dimming ballasts replace non-dimming ballasts in fluorescent fixtures. From inside each fixture, these ballasts make it possible for the fluorescent lamp to dim. They are the energy-saving apparatus, tuning the fluorescent lamps to have a lower high-end light level. These addressable dimming ballasts also act as the communicative hubs for the entire fluorescent lighting control system. Incorporating intelligence into each fixture significantly increases the system’s flexibility. Fixtures can be addressed individually, or they can be grouped together, so multiple light fixtures respond to the same sensor—like communities within the larger lighting control system. Since each fixture containing an addressable dimming ballast can be controlled by itself or as a group, the fixtures can be readdressed as floor plans change.

Simple, low-voltage sensors
Sensors attach to the addressable dimming ballast directly. A sensor is assigned to one fixture or a group of fixtures and can be re-assigned without any rewiring.

Occupancy sensors	Occupancy sensors turn lights off when rooms are empty. When the sensor identifies a space as unoccupied, the occupancy sensor will automatically shut off all of the fixtures to which it is assigned.
Daylight sensors	Daylight sensors detect the presence of daylight in a space and adjust the overhead light levels of its appropriate fixtures accordingly, lowering electric light levels to complement available daylight, and raising them as daylight recedes.
IR receivers	IR (Infrared) receivers with remotes give employees personal control of their overhead light levels in both private offices and open office spaces.
Wallstations	Wallstations can provide switching, dimming, or preset control for private offices, team environments, and conference rooms.
Wireless handheld programmer	The wireless handheld programmer is a PDA-like device that addresses the daylight sensor, occupancy sensor, and wallstation to their respective fixture groups. It helps program how the sensors will function. The wireless programmer also can change the programming for all of the sensors and ballasts on a project without rewiring. For a lighting system with this level of control, no power packs or interfaces are required. It’s one of the biggest differences between the new generation of fluorescent lighting control systems and less adaptable predecessors.

But the more adaptable new generation offers an office space more than just improved system efficiency. These systems ensure the lighting system installed to fit the floor plan today will fit just as easily tomorrow.

Specifying for an adaptable fluorescent lighting control system

To ensure a reconfigurable lighting control system is included on a project, specify digital addressable ballasts, sensors that can be assigned to groups of fixtures, and wireless handheld programmers.

Specifications can also be made to ensure that the adaptable fluorescent lighting control system designed on a project is easy to install, easy to maintain, and easy to use.

Ease of installation

• Specify for the absence of power packs and interfaces. Fewer system pieces mean lower installation costs and the ability for installers to get on and off the job more quickly.
• Specify that control wiring accommodates the Class 1 or Class 2 preference of the installer. Dozens of studies confirm that installers prefer control wiring that can be run in the conduit with the power wiring (Class 1)—eliminating the need for extra conduit or wiring time. Modular cable (all-in-one prefabricated cable) can be used to quickly connect fixtures and drastically reduce wiring time in new construction. If desired, Class 2 control wiring is wired in a cable tray or with other harmless communication wiring.
• Control wiring can also be specified to be both topology-free and polarity-free. Topology-free control wiring allows the system to be wired in any format that the
  installer selects, such as daisy chain, star method or T-tap. With polarity-free control wiring, the digital addressable ballasts will work even if the wires are reversed.

Daisy chain Star Method T-tap

Ease of maintenance

• Specifying that the sensors and wallstations connect to the system via Class 2 wiring allows sensors and wallstations to be installed and relocated without calling an electrician, which also helps during installation.

Ease of use

• Some adaptable fluorescent lighting control systems generate instant reports of lamp and ballast information. These reports clearly communicate where failed ballasts or lamps exist throughout the facility, so an employee does not have to seek them out at night.

Ultimately, there are three basic methodologies for reducing the electricity used by a lighting system:

• Reduce the amount of time that the lights are turned on.
• Use more efficient light sources.
• Allow the electric lights to be on at less than 100%.

Lighting control can provide more to a building than system efficiency. It creates value for the office by accommodating the employee, making office spaces more productive and making buildings more sustainable. Plus, adaptable lighting control means a building will always have the functional lighting it needs as its organizational and system efficiency requirements change.

Today's conference room Tomorrow's open office The new generation of lighting control system can easily adapt to the reconfiguration needs of an organization or a space.