Moving towards agile ways of working
The London Borough of Hounslow is progressing towards new agile ways of working. To support this transition, the team relocated 1,300 personnel from The Civic Centre to 864 desk spaces in the new flagship headquarters, Hounslow House.
Crown Workspace acquired Premier Workplace Services in 2018, who was awarded this contract to provide these Moves and Changes services.
Strong communication for a hassle-free move
The relocation and clearance took place over five distinct phases. Extensive liaison between us and the Hounslow team enabled thorough planning, covering all eventualities and ensuring that this large-scale project did not interrupt day-to-day operations. Debrief meetings were held after each phase.
Phase one included the provision of new workstations pre-installation. This enabled workstations for the subsequent phases to be relocated during the week and put in place prior to the weekend staff moves for minimal disruption. During phases two, three and four, we provided crates, packaging, and labeling for personal effects and pre-moved a total of 216 workstations during working hours.
Continuous access to the library for a seamless transition
The relocation furniture included various styles of chairs, tables, cabinets and lockers over 1800 lm of departmental filing. These were carefully packed, moved and unpacked during weekends, and split over the four relocation phases. Phase four included the relocation of 694 linear metres of library books. As the library is in constant use during working hours, the packing, relocation, and unpacking was undertaken outside office hours.
The IT team fulfilled the migration of servers and the pre-install of desktop IT prior to the weekend moves.
Sustainable solutions helping the environment
Following the relocation phases, we provided a sustainable clearance of the Civic Centre for phase five. The clearance was completed against a tight timescale; all items removed were either sent to other Council sites for reuse or sustainably recycled with zero to landfill.
We decommissioned the building to the required standards. All redundant furniture and non-fixed items were removed and assessed against the waste hierarchy to prioritise reuse where viable. This included the secure removal of specialist safes and heavy items. The decommissioning was completed against a tight deadline, ready to hand over on time for works to commence.
“A professional and proficient service ensuring the move of the council & our partners were successfully moved across to our new site over a five-week period.”
“Our move went smoothly and we had positive feedback from staff as to how seamlessly the packing and transfer of items had gone.”
Facilities Management Team, Hounslow Borough Council
To find out more about our sustainable solutions and our commercial relocation services and how we can help you with your workspace move, get in touch.