Cubicle Control

s your workplace too hot, too cold, too stuffy? Chances are it is, because more than half of the 219 million square feet of space the General Services Administration owns or manages is in big, old buildings. GSA provides office space for more than 1 million federal employees.

If GSA is your landlord, keep an eye on the seventh floor of the agency's headquarters building in Washington. In September, GSA will unveil a revolutionary design for federal office space at the 82-year-old building. If it works, the same approach will be used at other federal buildings around the country.

The 45 occupants of the new space will be able to control heating, cooling, lighting and airflow individually at their workspaces. Lights will dim automatically when a workspace is unoccupied. Each worker will set the lighting level for his or her workspace; the system will recognize the available light and provide enough to reach the level the employee set.

Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh conducted a similar experiment (called the Intelligent Workplace) by building a new office space with these characteristics. GSA is applying Carnegie Mellon's lessons to old federal office buildings--"the ultimate in recycling," says Mike Atkinson of GSA's Public Buildings Service, who is heading up the effort GSA calls the Adaptable Workplace Lab.

The space will be adaptable primarily because its systems will be housed in a 4- to 10-inch tall space under the floor, rather than behind walls or in ceilings. If the space needs to be reconfigured, workers can lift up a floor panel to get to wires, cables and such. Cubicles, walls and panels can be moved quickly and easily. The project is expected to cut energy costs and will be environmentally friendly because changes can be made without discarding construction materials like drywall and wiring. "Our idea is to take things out of the walls and put them where you can get to them and keep them and reuse them," says Atkinson.

Comfort Counts

Most of all, the Adaptable Workplace Lab is intended to satisfy its occupants. Dissatisfaction with the work environment contributes to lower productivity. "Nodding off is not just a function of how much lunch you had or how little breakfast you had. It's a function of how much air you're getting and the quality of that air," says Atkinson. "It may affect whether you get that next promotion."

Improvements in thermal comfort, lighting, acoustics and indoor air quality have been found to increase productivity by as much as 6 percent, more than making up for the costs of improvements. According to the Office of Personnel Management, the 1997 federal nonmilitary payroll was $158 billion. So even a 1 percent increase in productivity governmentwide would add value (or avoid cost) of $1.6 billion a year, points out GSA's Rob Obenreder.

Atkinson's group will evaluate the Adaptable Workplace Lab on two levels: the building's physical performance and the occupants' performance--how the organization adapts, whether space enables it to be more responsive to customers and how satisfied workers are with their workspaces.

By the Book

The concepts behind the Adaptable Workplace Lab are laid out in a book by GSA's Office of Real Property.

The Integrated Workplace approach asks workers "What do you do? What is your mission?" rather than, "What do you need?" says Obenreder, the project's team leader. It also asks government planners and budgeters to look at long-term benefits--including improved productivity, job satisfaction and better use of resources--rather than automatically balking at a renovation project's initial cost.

"The idea is to improve GSA's brand of workspace systematically and make the building itself contribute to a better workspace, rather than just dressing it up with new furniture or new paint," says Atkinson.