Why it may feel as if your office is shrinking

Having shown older buildings in the area, I am confident the average office is shrinking in size. In fact a little research by the International Facilities Management Association indicates the following, "Surveys of facility professionals in 1994, 1997, and 2002 show that the average amount of square footage allotted to each worker has decreased continuously," report Amy Blanchett and Deborah Quinn Hensel.

Most of us would expect that the shrinking office is a product of corporations trying to be more efficient with their real estate dollars, but that would only be half the story. In fact, the way we use offices has changed. First, the computer has changed the use of the office and what is required. Smaller flat panel displays require smaller desk tops and online files require fewer filing cabinets that take up valuable floor space.

In addition, older offices were generally set up with a meeting area within the office in addition to the executive's desk area. The advent of e-mail and the Internet has eliminated the requirement of most of these private meeting areas. In fact, most offices now set up a few smaller private conference rooms to be shared by the entire office staff. If at all, only the highest ranking executives get a private meeting area in their office. Many of the space plans I have worked on this year do not provide a private meeting area in any of the offices.

The question remains: How small could your office get? The major issues to address are noise level, presence of natural light, indoor air quality, and lack of privacy. According to Dan Kahl of KAHL Commercial Interiors Inc., the leading office furniture manufacturers are addressing these major challenges through better product design. New office furniture systems are more sound absorbent than furniture in the past. In addition, today's furniture systems incorporate glass and air flow elements into the acoustic divider panels. Many corporate users in Reno are also utilizing the sliding glass doors on their open plan workstations in order to provide some privacy similar to a private office, yet with significantly less square footage requirements.

On the air quality issue I consulted Lee Roberts of Applied Mechanical Inc. Based upon the typical HVAC system installed in an office building in the Reno area, he indicated the maximum capacity is one worker per 100 square feet. The HVAC systems of today manage the external load created by the outside temperature, the internal load created by the equipment and inhabitants of the office, and the ventilation load to provide fresh air at all times. In order to achieve this level of density in an office, most of the occupants would have to work in cubicles.

So is that level of density even possible in the Reno office market? The answer is probably not. While the physical building could handle it, the majority of office workers would not accept high density in their work space. The workers on the West Coast live here by and large because of the quality of life we have. In New York City, workers accept that high level of density and think nothing of it, here we value our space too much. In addition, with our current level of public transportation and current parking code, there are very few buildings in the area that could accommodate the parking to support that high a density.

Tim R. Ruffin is managing partner and senior vice president with Colliers International in Reno.