Category: Millennium Storage and Interiors (page 16 of 17)

Why Going To Work Will Never Be Boring In These Offices

December 23, 2015 / / 0 Comments

An interesting article published in the Guardian newspaper the other day about the world’s coolest offices revealed some of the weird and wonderful ways business owners fit out their offices.

Whether you agree with the Guardian’s coolest offices or not, there are several companies out there whose aim is to turn the idea of the traditional office on its head and create the kind of environments that wouldn’t look out of place in a kids’ play barn.

Jimmy’s Iced Coffee in London for example features trampolines, and even skate ramps and a place to go and drink a cold beer at the end of a hard day. This would more than satisfy the teenager that may be lurking inside each of your staff members but what about Ticket Master with their suspended toy airplanes – and a slide? One thing is for sure, if you ever bring the children to work and work happens to be Ticketmaster’s London offices, then they will feel right at home.

Perhaps not surprisingly Innocent, the natural ingredient smoothie firm has gone back to nature for inspiration with fake grass flooring, wooden picnic benches and fruit baskets for its health conscious employees.

Like them or loathe them, all of these offices are here in the UK and a trend that began in America could become the office of the future in a town near you!

Central London Office Conversions More Likely To Be For Housing

December 2, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Commercial landlords are growing increasingly alarmed at the number of offices being converted to residential housing. Many have attacked the government’s policy on housing in Central London, which appears to be at odds with the need for more rather than less office space in the capital.

Apparently large areas of central London are being turned over to the housing sector as property prices continue to soar and residential property becomes more lucrative for developers.

Westminster for example has lost a total of 4.4 million sq ft of commercial office space in recent years. Commercial landlords fear that the lack of office space could put a lid on economic growth in the capital with businesses forced to look outside central areas for available space.

If the mass conversion of offices into residential property continues, it is almost certain to put the government on a collision course with business groups while in the longer term it will do little to solve the housing shortage in the capital.

The UK population and that of London continues to rise and this will only put further pressure on the availability of land for development. There are calls for central London to be treated differently to the rest of the country when it comes to planning to ensure that the correct balance is struck between commercial and residential buildings.

Is Having A Stuffy Office Bad For Your Brain?

November 4, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Research into the effects of bad air quality in offices says so. Poor air quality is said to be responsible not only for poor cognitive performance but also health.

Researchers have reported in Environmental Health Perspectives that working in stuffy offices can halve cognitive scores. The news that half of office staff could be performing at half their normal mental capacity is unlikely to be well received by business owners.

Research found that simply opening a window or two to let in some fresh air can bring positive benefits, however this may not be possible in the depths of winter when staff may complain about the cold instead.

Yet if productivity levels are to reach their maximum it is clear that offices should be designed to expose people to at least some fresh air during the day. A fresh breeze might be all staff need to increase their production levels and brain functioning.

The study was limited to just 24 professionals, but it did include architects, designers and engineers. The study was conducted over 2 weeks in what was laid out as a typical office space. The study examined Co2 a VOC levels and how the gas impacts on performance.

Scores in tests were over 60% higher when conditions were set for these gases to be reduced indoors.

Is Office Furniture As We Know It About To Change Forever?

October 22, 2015 / / 0 Comments

The introduction of computers into the office as well as tablets, and mobile phones in some cases has helped to change the way everyone works, making work more efficient and easier. What hasn’t changed too much is the traditional office layout but this could soon be transformed as we all get used to not being chained to the desk by the wires that once powered various devices.

Change hasn’t happened yet of course. The average office worker will still be turning up for work at 9am grabbing a coffee and then sitting static at a desk for the best part of eight hours. Yet when you look at how technology has advanced, then it is a mystery why we still stick to the old habits.

The standard office furniture consists of desks, chairs, maybe a sofa or two and a large meeting table. This could however soon be replaced with ‘smart furniture’ which allows you to plug in and charge up mobiles, and tablets or areas that allow us to move around and be more mobile. Furniture for collaborative workspaces is likely to be far more radically designed in the not too distant future.

What will remain however is the office as a place to meet face to face. While technically the need for an office no longer really exists there is still no technological substitute for real human interaction in the workplace.

Aldi Puts Down Marker With Warehouse Plans

October 6, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Supermarket chain Aldi are looking increasingly like they want to take the UK’s biggest supermarkets. The budget supermarket has planned to open up 2.5 million sq ft of warehouse space to satisfy what it expects to be future demand.
Aldi’s warehouse expansion is going against the grain of current demand with only Asda looking seeking planning permission for a warehouse in 2014. The warehouse space they were planning was considerably less at 115,120 sq ft than that planned by Aldi.

According to Barbour ABI’s construction data, there have been planning applications for a 890,789 sq ft so far in 2015 with Aldi accounting for 645,835 sq ft of that total.

Competition seems to be heating up in the supermarket sector with consumers increasingly opting for what they perceive as good value. The big supermarkets are finding it hard to compete with the low prices offered by some of their smaller rivals.

All this of course is good news for consumers who will benefit from price wars between the supermarkets. Aldi’s decision to add more warehousing demonstrates a growing confidence in the future of its operations.
In contrast some of the bigger supermarkets are closing down their smaller stores and refocusing their efforts on competing with each other as well as smaller supermarkets chains such as Aldi and Lidl.

Supermarket Warehouses Worth More Than Their Stores

September 25, 2015 / / 0 Comments

The big supermarkets may well be axing many of their high street convenience stores due to a combination of high costs and low profits, but the supermarket warehouse boom is continuing and attracting the attention of commercial property investors in the process.

According to the Financial Times recently, customers are increasingly shopping online and this is what is driving demand for large warehouse spaces from supermarkets such as Tesco, Morrisons, Sainsbury’s and Aldi.

Online sales are currently growing at 12% a year and although they still account for only 12% of spending, the convenience of online shopping is likely to see online sales rival those of supermarkets in the years to come. It may also bring an end to the traditional weekly shop. People may be more likely to gather round a tablet or desktop computer to shop rather than venture out in the car.

The expansion of warehousing may be halted temporarily by the lack of space to build and a shortage of available units. This may well act to push up the prices of warehouses across the UK and land that is suitable for the purpose.

Investors are likely to find the prospect of high demand now and in the future a good reason to put more money into what was previously seen as an unglamorous and low yield investment.

Robots Manage Hitachi Warehouse Workers

September 15, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Ever get the feeling that your manager is cold and lacks any kind of emotion? This feeling must be all too familiar with workers in Hitachi warehouses in Japan where robots are giving out the orders.

The new machine manager uses artificial intelligence to manage human workers. The intelligence is gathered from learning human techniques and then processing them to continuously improve efficiency according to an article published in the Daily Mail recently.

While true robot intelligence is some way off, production work in warehouses seems to be the ideal environment for this first generation of robot managers. This may make unsettling reading for the average warehouse worker however. While robots are likely to be far more efficient and cheaper than hiring a human manager, they are not going to be sympathetic or empathise if a worker has problems.

Fortunately humans are still in control of the process and robots at the Hitachi warehouses are there purely to increase performance. This is something they are already achieving with productivity boosted by 8% in those warehouses using them.

Warehouse workers will take orders from the robots and then they will be asked to come up with better ways to do things and suggest ways to solve problems. The robot will then choose the best ones and make the necessary improvements. Scary stuff.

UK Manufacturing Picks Up But It’s Still A Drag

August 20, 2015 / / 0 Comments

The UK manufacturing sector is struggling under the weight of a strong pound as the leaner service sector continues to paint a rosy picture of the economy.

Either way for companies involved in warehousing the prospects are good if consumer spending continues to rise with more space needed to store all those purchases.

For manufacturing however the prospects don’t look as good while the EU struggles nd its currency continues to fall in value against others including the pound. Despite this manufacturing growth did manage to pick up in July even if orders actually grew at their slowest pace in 12 months and the pace of new orders slowed to levels last seen in September 2014.

The government will of course be keen to point to another strong year for the UK economy even if its promises to get Britain making and exporting things again has conveniently been put on the back burner for now.

There is also now a problem for the Bank of England. Do they raise interest rates or keep them s they are to avoid a further strengthening of GBP? Exporters to European markets will be watching this with interest in the coming months.

More Warehouses Needed To Satisfy Growing Demand For Space

July 17, 2015 / / 0 Comments

The shopping revolution we call ecommerce has led to an ever increasing demand for space to fit the huge amount of products bought online every day and the demand is only set to get bigger in the years to come. This presents a problem for warehouse builders and the people who fit them. How is can they keep up?

The answer to this is that they are currently struggling to keep up according to a new white paper which highlights that developers are currently unable to build properties quick enough to satisfy demand.

The white paper was put together by Colliers International as well as a logistics companies, architects and project consultants to examine how the commercial property sector is coping with demand for warehouses to store goods for ecommerce stores.

According to the white paper, Internet sales are expected to grow by a 15% every year and this will be the case for the foreseeable future.

Unfortunately Large-scale Grade A warehouses that measure in excess of 100,000sq ft are in short supply and even when planning permission is gained to build them, it takes a year to 18 months to build them. The current supply of warehouses of this size available in the UK means that there is less than 10 months before capacity is reached according to Colliers.

How eCommerce Growth Will Revolutionise Warehousing And Logistics

July 13, 2015 / / 0 Comments

The growth in ecommerce has the look and feel of a revolution more awe inspiring and life changing than anything seen since the industrial revolution.

Warehousing and logistics have always been important to retailers of course. This is nothing new but what has changed due to the growth of eCommerce is the speed and ease at which anyone can just go online and order pretty much whatever they want.

From the moment a button is clicked to purchase online, a chain of events is set in motion which can to the delivery of goods in less than 24 hours in some cases. Back in the early days of the Internet, this sort of speed would have been virtually unheard of.

Another step change we are already seeing in eCommerce is the growth in sales made on mobile phones. Google has already responded this new phenomenon by encouraging all website owners to make their websites mobile friendly.

The very idea of ordering something on a mobile phone a few years ago would have been scoffed at. People wanted to look and feel the product they were buying, but there is the feeling that this is slowly going out of fashion.

Photographs are far more crisp and realistic than they used to be and it’s now not such a big deal to order something on the strength of a picture we can zoom into and rotate in 3d if we so choose.

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