Evolving our workspace to support client requirements
In the light of the COVID-19 pandemic, workspaces have evolved dramatically. Crown Workspace seeks to proactively support clients throughout estate moves and changes and as such, the team identified a need to shift the organisation of our own workspace to improve our business storage facilities and to expand the Renew IT department to reflect this growing service offering.
With warehouse facilities at Ardra Road, Southbury Road and Park Royal, a reconfiguration was required in order to optimise the available space. Extra oversized storage space was essential, as was creating a specialist atmosphere storage area for heritage/fine art items.
To accommodate the changes involved the redistribution of containers between sites. To better accommodate storage requirements from regional UK clients, a facility was taken on in Wolverhampton.
New specialist storage for oversized and fine art items
Crown Workspace storage facilities offer secure, barcoded and indexed storage for easy retrieval and effective management for our clients. For added security, containers are not marked with client names but are tracked electronically by a unique reference code.
All our facilities are built to a high specification to guard against fire, pests, water and theft. They are also climate controlled and gated, with many backed up with 24hr patrol staff.
In order to better accommodate the specialist needs of our clients for oversized or Fine Art clients, and to fully maximise the available space for storage, two new three-storey structures were built within the warehouses at two of Crown’s Ardra Road sites.
This meant that over 1000 containers needed to be relocated between Crown sites to make way for the new structures, with meticulous tracking and appropriate handling ensuring a seamless process.
A significant part of the specialist Crown Fine Art service includes storage of oversized items. To improve the service offering for this division, a purpose-built temperature and humidity-controlled space was created for the storage of non-fabric items within the Park Royal site. This required the redistribution of Parliament heritage furniture and architectural furniture to Ardra Road sites, which was completed according to protocol by the CFA and CWS teams.
A total of 2000sqft of space was also allocated to Crown Fine Art in the new Ardra 3 structure, allowing them to more easily manage their cases. Within the Ardra 1 structure, a dedicated space for oversized items was created, with a floor dedicated to relocated Parliament heritage furniture.
Investing for expansion
The entire ground floor of the Ardra 3 structure was fitted out to meet the needs of the developing Renew IT team. Their expansion has enabled Renew IT to be able to process the incoming jobs in a more structured format, with designated working areas for each element of their process.
To better support Crown’s clients around the UK regions, a 30,000sqft storage site in Wolverhampton has been added which will enable speedier redistribution of items to clients in Scotland, the north, the midlands and Wales. Currently accommodating 600 containers, this site will allow growth for over 1600 containers outside of London.
Our office relocation service teams worked efficiently on this significant project, supporting a smooth transfer and tracking precise movements of every contained that was relocated during the moves process.
This self-delivered project enabled Crown Workspace to better support clients’ storage requirements and expanded the space available for the Renew IT team. The project was delivered under pandemic conditions, and thus social distancing and appropriate measures were taken to ensure the security of staff.
The services provided included:
- Creation of controlled atmosphere storage spaces
- Creation of storage space for oversized items
- Reconfiguration of existing warehouses
- Fit out of workspace for Renew IT team
- Secure relocation of containers between sites
- Specialist handling of fine art and heritage items
“Over the last year, we have seen several changes within our warehouses including reducing the number of containers in 2 of our sites to make way for purpose built mezz floors to allow us to store oversized items and 2 temperature & humidity-controlled environments.
We redeployed one of our Storage Supervisors in Wolverhampton for a month to ensure that the warehouse was set up in the same way we have set up every site in London. We cleared around 32 containers per day from an external provider during weekdays which allowed us to complete the project with a tight deadline.
We are constantly looking at ways to be able to store more efficiently, and with the changes made within the last year, I believe we have our best chance of doing so.”
Chris Dumoulin, Storage Manager, Crown Workspace