Preparing office spaces for people to return

As companies assess how best to welcome more staff back to office life, one major bank in London has been gearing up to make sure its headquarters is ready.

Alex Conkleton, a lead facilities manager at JLL, has been one of the few working in the office over the last month. But in the run-up to a potential reopening, he’s been working closely with Chris Lay, EMEA Performance Lead at JLL, to use data to make sure all the spaces are safe and fit for purpose.

“We’ve been working non-stop to be able to deliver more availability of space in over a million square foot office tower,” Alex says. “Safety and hygiene are of course paramount, and that means new levels of preparation.”

Along with fitting reception desks and catering areas with hygiene screens, the teams are diving into workplace data to model the impacts of the pandemic, not just for this building, but across the bank’s portfolio of offices and branches.

“We can see from dedicated dashboards the levels of maintenance orders in progress,” Chris says. “That allows us to know immediately where strengths and weaknesses are in the portfolio. That was always in place, but it’s become an even more important tool now as the client looks to work out which buildings could be reopened and when.”