MECD Pilot Workspace Enters its Third Phase

25 Apr 2019

The third cohort of participants have entered the MECD Pilot Workspace, which will be their home for the next three months

A new 46-strong set of participants have moved into the MECD Pilot Workspace on Pariser Lawn, trialling the workspace design options to inform the design of 10,000m2 of allocated workspace within MECD. 

Pilot phase three marks the final formal testing of the communities scenario recommended as a result of the 2016/17 Woods Bagot engagement exercise. The three phases of user testing during the 2018/19 academic year have been developed in collaboration with the Project Team, change consultants, Advanced Workplace Associates (AWA), and project architect, iDEA, to help shape the workspace brief for MECD.

Two cohorts of participants have already spent three month stints in the pilot workspace, where they have tested and provided substantive feedback on their experiences within the test workspace environment. Recommendations on the final MECD workspace design brief will be informed by the results of all three phases of the MECD Pilot Workspace testing and will go to the University’s Capital Planning Steering Committee on Tuesday, 2 July where a final decision on the design brief will be taken.

The third cohort of participants comprises two research groups from the School of EEE, the CEAS/Materials Recruitment and Admissions team, and the Faculty Senior Leadership team. The 46 members of staff and postgraduate research students moved in on Tuesday, 23 April and will be based in the space until Friday, 12 July. A range of activities will be undertaken throughout the duration of the pilot period to gather feedback from the users to understand how the pilot is meeting its objectives. 

The pilot space has tested different workspace designs in each cohort and these have been developed with our design partners and change champions. These are groups of colleagues from the participant groups and wider MECD community. The Design partners analyse how each pilot community works and develop a design brief which is then translated into a layout by the project architects. They have also developed the pilot success criteria and the change support process and this co-design approach ensures that the requirements of the different groups are properly represented and that the design meets their needs. 

Once the design for each pilot phase is agreed Change champions from each participating group work with their colleagues to raise awareness and understanding of the principles and practicalities of the new workplace environment.

If you are interested in finding out more about the pilot project you can see the space first-hand by booking on to a tour.

For more information including FAQs and the floor plans for phases one and two, there is a dedicated StaffNet section for the pilot workspace.