breathe chosen by South Cambs District Council

breathe of Cambridge has been chosen as the preferred partner to work on the new offices for South Cambridgeshire District Council. Four companies were asked to present initial space plan designs for the Cambourne office and to provide demonstration workstations for inspection. All the meetings were held in a vacant building on Cambourne Business Park, to allow the groups to evaluate the demonstration furniture layouts in a relevant setting.

‘The breathe group was selected to assist the Council because of its outstanding reputation and its approach to the speculative design and layout’, explained Councillor Richard Summerfield, the Council’s deputy leader. ‘These strengths were strongly supported by the furniture manufacturer, Steelcase, which works in close partnership with breathe, provides a wide range of furniture solutions and also takes a proactive approach to developing effective work practices.’

In addition to consulting with members of staff to establish how departments work and interact with one another, breathe will use a process known as 'work place mapping' to locate workstations and office equipment in a way that will help to encourage better working throughout departments. Moving from a predominantly cellular environment into an open plan office means that social space, office centres, noise levels and department confidentiality all have to be taken into account.

The new office will be a 'green' building, and, as such all aspects of the project have to be shown to be environmentally sound. Steelcase has very strong environmental credentials, with factories accredited to the 'environmental' standard ISO 14001 as well as continually developing its sustainable manufacturing processes, as demonstrated by Eco Management Audit System (EMAS) accreditation. Timber supplied from PEFC (Pan European Forestry Council) approved sources.

breathe interiors recently completed work on a project similar to the Council's, which moved into new premises in December. The combination of this experience and other projects in both the public and private sectors will be invaluable to the Council in space planning the Cambourne office and during the physical relocation. In addition to breathe interiors the breathe group incorporates a number of specialist divisions which include storage, move management, furniture supply, furniture rental, air conditioning and architecture. It is expected that the depth of knowledge and experience within the breathe group will assist the Council in developing the working environment in the Cambourne office.

Alongside the work place mapping exercise breathe will be carrying out a filing audit and assessing existing furniture. breathe will then help to develop layout proposals for the new office.

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