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Avoiding the Cube Farm - Effective Office Floor Plans?
scorp1us asks: "My company, after cramming 30 people into 3000sq feet, has a new lease on life in a 7700sq foot office (pun blatantly intended!). We are primarily a 3D animation/software company and we hope to avoid the cube farm design, but with a large open area in the middle, it is the default solution. We would like to know what effective strategies are used at other places that avoid the cube farm, and produce an inspiring, motivating work environment. This location has a split level and 12' ceilings, so it has a lot of potential."
I mean... how is the 7000 square feet configured? Completely open? Do higher ups want larger offices?
Just keep the PHB far way form the things they have no clue about and you will be fine.
Have you seen Joel's article on what his office looks like? http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/BionicOffic e.html
Scott Adams has written some excellent literature on this: first start by assigning 4000 sq feet to a place called scorp1us-ville, dedicated to illegal gambling and drinking.
If you do use cubicles, don't forget to extort money from people in exchange for larger ones.
With some subtle variation, the cube farm can be transformed from a soulless cell block into something that actually improves productivity. If you organize each functional team's cubes around their own central open areas, communication between team members will improve significantly.
There's no failure quite as dissatisfying as a complete and total solution to the wrong problem.
When the company I used to work for moved into large office space with cubicles, we chose to create 4-6 person development pits instead of individual cubes. This worked rather well. Each pit basically had a separate team so team members could interact easily and naturally with each other, while providing enough space to avoid feeling crowded.
The openness allowed the developers to bounce ideas off each other and help each other out. Ad-hoc meetings for each team were a snap, everyone could just swivel their chairs to face the center. Meeting times were cut down to about one quarter what gathering everyone into a meeting room spends.
Depending on the personalities, you could try various sizes of pits and maybe have a few individual cubicles for those who really can't work well in open environments. But I think per-person cubicles create a lot of petty territorial issues, which was another thing avoided by the pits.
I've never had to do this but here's my ideas.
:-
Eveybody gets there own private space with natural light and non locking door.
Individual climate controls, lighting under user control.
8 power sockets, 2 ethernet, no phone. VOIP to a central phone system.
Have a standard office furniture, desk, chair, lamp etc but allow the user to take the cash value and furnish their own office if they wish.
I'd go for
Large cheap picnic table, 8' x 3' about 3' high.
Cheap set of drawers on wheels, lockable, for under desk.
Expensive chair.
Large whiteboard.
Bankers lamp.
I'd also sort out the tech a similar way, standard set up with good kybd/screen + IT support or cash value in which case IT is responsible as far as the socket in the wall.
After three years the user is allowed to update, most users will keep their old stuff and take the cash.
Yes the above will cost $$$ and goes beyond the norm.
I've never worked in a 'cube farm' by definition. Places I've worked have always had 'banks' of desks, usually in groups of four. At my last job, we had low (1/2 ft) walls between each of the desks, and at my new job we just have four desks jammed together. I prefer the later, although it does mean my colleagues can encroach on my office space, but it is handy for passing the holepunch etc.
Anywhere I've worked, the whole team can see each others faces at all times - unless we have our heads down studying papers or whatever, but even then if you call our names we'll look up. I like being able to see my colleagues because I can just say a name and ask for advice/help/etc and get it instantly in person.
I really like the idea of having project teams situated near each other, with some kind of cubicle walls separating them from each other. It helps build a team spirit, and also helps keep noise down a little.
The most important thing, in my experience, is to stuff the phone-talkers into their own cubicles or offices. They have a tendency to have the phone ring when they aren't there, and also make quite a bit of noise just yammering away. Yeah, I realise this includes sales, project managers, etc.
Use decorative elements to separate groups as well, such a plants. Not everything has to be a cubicle wall. Lighting effects can also create unified workspaces.
And if your teams may switch off or rebuild regularly, find ways to keep everything fluid, so you can shift around as needed.
Linux - because it doesn't leave that Steve Ballmer aftertaste.
Put lockable casters on your desks, conference tables, bookcases. (Hopefully your chairs have wheels already.)
Subdivide the central core into 4 sectors with a tall fixed partition wall, so there's a core wall that spaces needing a solid wall (e.g. a conference room whiteboard) can abut. Put power and network jacks in this wall. Run a grid of 3/8" tension cables a few inches below the ceiling across the space on 12" centers (i.e. create a repeating 12"x12" grid of wires near the ceiling.) Space power and network drops regularly in the floor (or, if underfloor jacks are too expensive, in the ceiling.)
Allow teams and individuals to configure workspaces within that space by hanging various-height fabric curtains (weighted to the floor) from that grid with long j-hooks.
Just an idea I thought was neat - I'm sure there are problems with it, but cube walls are a bitch to move around and don't permit organic shapes or long, straight divisions with no perpendicular support. You could have individuals in C-shaped pods within an open area, or circular common workspaces with desks on the circumference, or any other configuration - and individual teams don't need someone from facilities to show up with tools to move things around, just a grasping pole to reach the j-hook (and maybe a ladder if you put your drops in the ceiling rather than the floor.)
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penrose_tiles
T O1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fs rchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=4133152.PN.&OS=PN/41331 52&RS=PN/4133152
Better get his permission first.
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=P
+0 Meh
This is a problem for an architect.
A good architect is specifically skilled in making good spaces, and will be able to come up with ideas which you hadn't thought of, and will help you to make the most of the space you have to work with.
You mentionned having a large open space. How about buying employees laptops, longing chairs and heat lamps, sand and some sound machines to simulate the sound of water. Everyone dreams of working at the beach. So, why not make it happen?
... and if any body ever questions their workload, don't bother them since they're working on their tans! You can wear bearfoot (though some you might want to encourage to wear shoes to hide their feet from others). This idea, I hope you will find, will be extra motivation for employees to work harder to make it to management. I think it will be a productivity boost. And who wouldn't want to have company meetings on a beach?
The beach area can be where management works (sits) all day long
I will forward my resume immediately if this idea is implemented. I've always wanted to work in management, and based on the ability to tan all day long, I believe I will be a great asset to the company.
After spending over 7 years trying to make that happen... I failed. So I moved to country where cube farms are illegal.
Problem Solved
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
It's the rest of the place that can make it good or bad. One big problem with most cube farms is that the walls are close to the same bland color as the cubicles themselves. They are also all neutral colorsl which makes it a big "boring" space. I'm not recommending you paint the place yellow and blue or anything - just use some color. Plants and trees are always nice. If you have 12-foot ceilings you could get some nice "trees" that could be seen over the cubical walls to break up the monotony and there are plenty of companies that will lease them and maintain them. You can also get into "art swaps" where businesses get together and share art - every month or two you get new paintings for the walls - some change in the environment is always good. If you really like one, you can generally buy it.
Now, people need personal space when they want to get focused on something and communal space when collaborating. My advice is to give people larger cubes (10x10 or 7x14) for their personal space and encourage them to customize with pictures/posters/objects as they like. This will eat up about 4000-4500 square feet including aisles and other overhead space. Take the other 3000 square feet and make some nice communal areas that people can enjoy. Why not have a "garden" where there are a lot of trees/plants and a fountain? If you don't have fish, keeping the water clear is pretty easy. (Fish die if you mess up the chemicals.) Throw in 2 or 3 cafe tables and people can eat lunch, take a break or have small meetings. It's only a few hundred square feet and it gives a completely different feel than a regular office and allows people to clear their minds. Also, if you want to divide the area into groups or sections - don't use higher walls. First, they eliminate the advantages of having the high ceilings and they are more of the same - just higher. Use greenery or glass so you don't make the space feel smaller.
I'm not sure if you have a need for large meeting rooms or not, but they should be larger than strictly needed. There is nothing worse than being stuck in a small room with too many people that slowly heats up as the meeting progresses. Also, if you have a green area, have a glass wall in the meeting room that gives a view of it. If you need privacy you can close the blinds but people generally don't like cramped spaces and if you have something nice to look at, use it.
So don't blame bad offices on the cubicles alone - if you don't use colors or variations, everything looks bad. Try visiting a university campus and seeing how the hallways in old buildings feel. Sure, everyone has their own office, but it almost feels like a cube farm - narrow halls, no natural lighting, no variation - just door, wall, door, wall, door, water fountain, wall, door, wall.... Then visit some of the newer buildings and see what you like about them. I'm guessing it will be open areas and use of windows and greenery (or windows that look over greenery.)
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
Reminds me of the time my boss asked me why I was late on a very complex piece of code. I told him I was interupted too often to get my head into it long enough. He was a good boss, and asked me what I needed to get it done. I said 2 weeks ALONE uninterupted! He granted my wish, I had an office with a locked door, no windows, he told no one where I was and QUIET. 10 days later I came out with the code, the others plugged it in and said it went five times as fast as expected and exceeded the expected optimization of all 1120 known business cases. Only one minor issue on code review. Got an award for it too.
But good programmers do also need social environments and open space with people. This is important or else you get "geek" syndrome, not good.
So take 40% of the space, add a pool table, darts, a good caffene machine, tables and trees. Even add wireless for portables. Maybe even a pinball machine. Take the other 60% of the space and make private offices with doors that lock. Keep the office ceilings open so the air is good but high sound absorbing walls.
The idea being, come out and be social, plan in the open, get an extra strong coffee, look out the window and be happy. Clear the mind and think global. But once the planning is done, and you have to learn/punch code you can go to your office and shut the door and punch up the good code without trying to multitask between being human and a machine.
Other than the nice wiring and lounge, I'm unimpressed by this slightly modified cubicle layout. The floor plan is essentially a cube farm with 45 degree walls. That tilt wastes space in the window corner and keeps the window light from reaching the common space. The same reflections that waste window light might improve audio privacy, but that's a high price to pay for the floor space. Actual line of site privacy is provided by the partition which divides the desk in two, creating two ... cubicles.
If it's got a partition the average person can't see over, it's a cubicle. If it's got a floor to ceiling partition and no door, it's a cubicle. If you don't want a cube farm, you are left with half partitioned open spaces and real offices with ventilation and doors that close.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I mean this in all seriousness when I say to look into some basic feng shui techniques. Sure, a lot of it is presented as mystical bullshit, but at it's core, it is composed of very sound and well thought out ideologies regarding human/environment interaction. Or just hire a decent architect/interior designer.
Aura Module
This is a problem for an architect.
Sometimes it is and sometimes it's not. If you are building from scratch, by all means get an architect. If you are refitting an existing space you might want an Interior Designer. Architects are great for making buildings and they should be up to speed with basic layout, fire codes and all that. The devil being dealt with here is interior details.
An Interior Designer is what you really want for most office layout. Interior Design focuses on how to use interior spaces, and there's a large subspecialty dedicated to office space. They deal with color, lighting, workflow, power and communication details. Every major furniture maker has a network of distributors and each of those distributors has several Interior Designers on staff. They also work for Architects and themselves.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
That would be a Utopia. Where are you going to find a space for your team with enough windows for "everybody"?
Tall, very skinny buildings would be needed, which are not what you find in most cities.
Not strictly speaking cube design, but relevant if you're re-designing an office:
Stand up meetings.
Tables that stand at about 4.5 ft tall (average elbo hight for an average sized adult), that force people to stand and interact with each other. Intel uses this idea, and from what I've heard it's really effective at shortening meeting times, since it's less comfortable. And shorter meetings are a good thing.
--Jason
Zapman
Cube farms have many cost and flexibility advantages that should not be dismissed out of hand. They can be reconfigured for less construction cost and disruption, are easier to wire, easier to light, easier to ventilate, easier to build, and much cheaper. You may also save on the office lease if the landlord won't have to tear down too many fixed walls for the next tenant when you leave.
Simply put, there are good cube farms and bad cube farms. "Bad" cube farms have partition walls under 6ft, beige upholstry, poorly designed desks, no door, poor insulation, no open collaboration areas and no rooms with doors for meetings.
"Good" cube farms are possible. Select good partition walls that are 8' tall (but do not stretch all the way to the ceiling), have doors and have good sound insulation. Look for an attractive pattern on the cloth, a design with very configurable and comfortable work surfaces, roll-under file cabinets, etc. (Some old Steelcase stuff we have at work even has electric raising and lowering motors for the desk!)
To go with ANY office area, you need areas with comfy chairs, swing-out writing surfaces, and whiteboards and projectors. These are great for collaboration, but folks can still retreat to their cubes when they need privacy. You can have the cubes surround the open areas if you wish.
For manager cubes, it would be a good idea to have walls that go to the ceiling for private personnel discussions. You will also need conference rooms for your more "rambunctions" meetings, speakerphone conference calls, client meetings, etc. These should be equipped with projectors.
Your local "serious" office furniture supplier in a fair-sized city (i.e. NOT Staples) should have a whole showroom where you can check all this stuff out, arrange what you want, and have a good idea EXACTLY what it will look like before spending a dime.
SirWired
At my current workplace everyone who is involved in teamwork sits on an 'island'. An island is a simple arrangement of 4-6 desks facing inwards, so most people can see everyone on the same island. There are no cubicle walls or similar. You just run power/network across the ceiling and to the centre of each island. People who work on the same projects tend to sit on the one island or on a nearby island (almost pit style). People who work on similar tasks in your company should be put on an island together as that minimises the amount of desk-hopping that needs to be done.
This layout has at least one huge benefit - windows are common space. Sure, some people sit closer to the windows, but everyone has access to them. I often get up and just stroll over to a window and look out.
Some people might criticise this layout for privacy reasons. Frankly, what you gain is much better. Our developers work better together because it's a very grassroots team-oriented environment. We also don't have any employees whose concentration is so fragile that it is broken by a phone call being taken by a neighbour. The only people who don't sit on islands are senior management (CEO, the lone marketing guy, the secretary, etc). They sit on individual desks near each other. This helps to break up the whole "it's just a bunch of islands" that would give it a "forced team-building" feel.
Finally, we have 3 separate meeting areas. A long table near a corner used for whole-company meetings, smaller quiet meetings, or lunch. A separate room with teleconferencing for serious, noisy or brain-storming meetings. And a couple of couches near the entrance used for casual meetings where you want people to be relaxed and candid; most often used for people management or task assignments. It doubles as a place for visitors to sit if they need to wait.
PS. One of the reasons I really wanted to work at this place was the open office, huge windows and overall team/family feeling. You might find the same applies to your developers.
I have always thought that the center of the room should be a big open area with a lot of open desks, like a newsroom. Around the walls are closed offices. Everyone gets both an office and an open desk. When someone wants privacy and quiet, go hide. When communication is essential, come out in the open.
With cubicles, what do you guys think of the low walls? Where I work now, we have low walls. They're so low, that I can see everything while standing up since I am only about 5'.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
"Desks were mostly placed in pairs, facing each other, so almost everyone had an officemate, who was just a call away should you need to ask someone a quick question ("say, how do you do x in application y"?)."
There's one VERY important element that's being left out. Culture! As in what rules and conventions does the OP's culture impose on two or more people facing each other on a regular basis. Let alone all the other daily interactions.
Would a pit work for the Europeans or Asians? How about Ethiopian? When designing a living or working space things like that have to be addressed, even if they pass under your radar.
Although the parent posted AC, they are actually good questions. What you need is someone asking questions like this, so you/they can work out what it is that you actually need. It's called developing a brief, and if you're serious about having a fairly innovative office space then you should definitely engage an architect or space-planner with experience in "new office design", who can help with this and with the office layout. Probably the best known group in this field is DEGW - http://www.degw.com/
If you decide to go it alone, then you need to think really rationally about every aspect of your company. Most people here have suggested various layouts of cubes, some of which are pretty good, but you need to go a bit further than that. The one reason that companies are getting interested in changing their workplace design is that the quality of the work place environment is very important to people - especially younger generations - and to attract and retain the best and brightest you need to have an office that appeals to them. The other reason is that you can see tangible benefits by getting staff out of the silo-metality that cubes and single offices generate, and into spaces where they can communicate with each other. This is especially important if your business depends on people working together in teams.
So looking at a really basic level, you need to work our how your business operates. If you have a number of project teams, then you need to get the people in a team together. If your teams change frequently then you might put everything on casters like one other poster suggested. What we do in our own office is have desks without any dividers which are then clustered into groups for each project team. Some outsiders don't like this - because they feel it's too noisy or open - but in reality this is not an issue. With the slight increase in ambient noise, the office doesn't feel as interrupted when a phone rings, or when someone is having a conversation. This actually helps people communicate more freely and openly! - which is a good thing for the kind of work we do. However, if your business relies on lots of individuals doing their own thing - like lawyers or researchers, then you may want a whole load of little offices. This is fine - it's just thinking about a team of 1 rather than a team of say 6. The biggest team you should consider is about 20-30. After this size people won't work together as a single unit.
After working the team structure out, all these people are going to need somewhere to meet. Meeting spaces are generally noisy, so you want to cluster them away from the general working area rather than mixing everything up. Think about arranging your office into 4 general areas - entry, noisy, workgroup, quiet. The noisy places - meeting areas, kitchens, social spaces - should go near the entry and encourage people to bump into one another. It's amazing how much sharing of ideas and information happens in these areas. You should consider social spaces and kitchens as part of the work-space, and encourage people to use them. The workgroup space is obviously where most of your desks are - arranged in teams or however. It's good to provide some really quiet spaces at the ends of the workgroup zone for people to make private calls, or sit to work on specific work without interruptions.
Ok - so much writing and I've only really begun....which is why I think you should hire an architect! But either way, good luck with your new office.
lemonade was a popular drink and it still is
There is an interesting video on Channel 9 - http://channel9.msdn.com/ - that gives a tour of MS's new office space for the Patterns and Practices group. It shows some interesting ideas.
Just put in floor outlets with covers in a big grid, then give people tables/desks on castors that can be locked.... then let them move things around.
Pick an area and stick a big wrap around couch on top of a cool area rug, some end tables with lamps and put a big plasma display in front of it all with a square coffee table in the middle... this is the conference room, hook up a laptop to the plasma and your good to go.
Make a few more smaller seating groups in other areas for team discussions. Finally establish a rule... shhhh be quiet, people work here. If the place has decent acoustics you should be able to have normal conversations without disturbing everyone else. People who like it quiet will migrate away from the meeting areas and those who like the noise or don't care will be wherever.
This will get you started. You'll think up better ideas over time.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
That office design violates the most important guideline of Feng shui, which is that when sitting at the desk, you must have the doorway in clear sight. This is also a good idea because it relieves people of the nervousness of wondering who might be standing in the doorway looking in. And besides, it gives you enough time to switch back to the desktop your real work is on.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Having electrical outlets in the wall subjects them to the National Electrical Code. This code would place a number of requirements on the methods of attaching the UPSes back to the wall wiring, requirements for overcurrent protection separate from the UPS on each such circuit, minimum available current (e.g. at least 15 amps), and type of wiring used (armored cable, most certainly not anything of extension cord grade). And the most serious violation is the one that requires all power to be shut down with no more than six disconnecting operations grouped together in one location.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I work for a mid-sized (70-100) person video game company. We're moving to a new floor in the same building shortly. We'll now own the entire floor instead of 2/3rds of the floor we're on now. While we do have some common areas, we're really trying to focus on giving everybody a space of their own, even though we all share offices (2-4 people per office). The plan so far is that rather than forcing decorations on people, we're going to give each room the equivalent money to order their own stuff. If they want small desks so they can use the rset of the sapce for a meeting table or couch, so be it. If they want to buy bookshelf dividers (no cubicles walls allowed), so be it. All the final purchases have to be approved, so they way whatever gets purchased will at least be professional in appearance, but each room may do as they please. Rooms will be given an extra bonus to spend if their plans incorporate shared space such as meeting tables, design tables, or multi-person desks or if they incorporate ideas that encourage outseide people to come into the office (comfy chairs for guests, small couches, entertainment units, etc). The idea is that the the offices will encourage people to go visit each other more often and hold impromptu meetings in their offices rather than booking the conference room 3 days from now.
It's not stupid. It's advanced.
In the middle.
You can get much cheaper office space here. It's newer and looks better.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Give employees room to do their work,where ever,whenever.the place where I work makes everyone sit in islands(with laptops facing one direction).Hence,most of the time,i usually just get my work done in the pantry,its simple and conveient
...levels!
...I just came for the free beer.
The whole cash-value concept for computers or furniture almost never works. First, if each employee picks their own furniture then what happens when someone leaves the company? Does the new guy get new furniture or is he stuck with the prior set? Second, mismatched office furniture doesn't make it a better place to work--it just promotes individuality. There are other ways to help folks feel comfortable at work.
I've worked in places that avoided the cube farm. I've worked in cube farms. I've had oceanfront offices and lived life out of a briefcase. I can tell you that of the bunch, some of the best environments I've worked in had cubes. It had nothing to do with furniture and everything to do with culture.
Of course we torture people, we need the information --Gen. Pinochet
My company has a cube fetish. Everyone who is not management has a cube. Thankfully this does not extend to me as they office planner ran out of cubes when the built my area. I have two tables (gasp) for my work area and these work great. I can move the tables around, other people can work with me, and I am not locked down to a single area. When I am assigned to a project, the project is assigned to my desk. That is the project home. People who work on the project with me drop by to help out or come over to do their own work away from their projects. When I help out on other projects, we work in an open conference room.
It's just a way of looking at work as a project assigned to an area and then designing an area to house a project and not a person+equipment. I could pick up my workstation and move it right now if there were other areas like mine around the building.
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
Hook them up to a DVR that cycles through the following:
Pleasant nature scenes.
random shots of other people's cubicles
A shot of the boss's desk.
It gives a wide open feeling, with the power of knowing where your boss is, and the random chance that others will learn you are hard at work.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
With a new lease on life it's the perfect opportunity do it right, and it sounds like having adequate space, and what sounds like an interesting space is a good start. Clearly your intentions sound great it's certainly possible to get away from cube farms and achieve the inspiring workspace your looking for. There are two elements to secure this goal: having an adequate budget: and the knowledge, experience, and creativity of the person who will create the environment.
Finding the right designer is a key element. First of all there's been several comments about architects, designers and decorators. Architects tend to be building people and decorators are exactly that decorators. You want an interior designer, one that has ASID or IIDA credentials, however, just because they have the accreditation doesn't mean they're good. Like any other profession there's good and bad. Unless you've already selected the furniture you want to use it's probably a good idea to steer clear of designers that work for furniture dealers. Using them is like, "hiring the fox to guard the hen house." You want a designer that's free of ties with any particular supplier of equipment. Interviewing a designer should be as intense as hiring an employee. You need to see their portfolio, visit sites they created for other companies, and talk with a few of their clients.
A good designer will propose to you that they interview all the employees in your organization. They need to know and understand your business as well as you do, but from a different perspective. Their first step after the interviewing process should be to create a relationship diagram, to place the people where they need to be in relation to one another. This is paramount to a good design so don't fluff it off. This is the phase called, "space planning." It's here where you will get the basic idea of how the work flows through the space. Core areas will be determined such as conference rooms, cafeteria/lounge, toilets, and private offices, storage, electrical/mechanical areas, etc. Typically this should be central to the space, and depending on the space should be central to the core of the building. These areas will likely be at he inner core of the building not on the outside windows, but they can be treated with glass walls to allow light in and so they have a vantage point of the office and view of the exterior of the building.
With the data collected from each individual the designer should be able to create a variety of workspaces that will meet the needs of the individual workers, and with some minor adjustment tailor them to each individuals needs. It's here that you should begin looking at the type of furnishings you wish to use. Designers are knowledgeable but aren't always aware of everything that's in the market. You can help them by doing some of your own research. There should be uniformity, but with the adaptability of meeting the needs of each individuals job function. This is where most companies get in trouble with cubicles. Because there are so many parts and peaces, sizes and colors companies will standardize for the purposes of simplicity for facility management personnel, and sacrifice the efficiency and needs of the workers.
For a good designer "the space talks to them," this may sound strange, but it's true, a good designer listens to the space and creates an environment from the space that works for the client.
Be sure the designer takes field dimension of the space. Don't allow them to simply work from building plans. Many a costly problem occurs from a designer not having good drawings to work with.
If you don't find a designer that works through this process keep looking. I can't emphasize enough how important this is--that is unless you don't have a budget to hire a designer. If this is the case you or someone in your company needs to put their regular job on hold for a few months and take this on themselves. Likely this will result in a thankless mission.
Once the space planning