How a 12-week Abintra occupancy survey is helping leading commercial law firm Hill Dickinson plan for growth and make evidence-based decisions about its future London workplace.

The challenge  

For a growing business with a significant footprint in the City, getting workplace decisions right can be a key driver of growth.

Leading commercial law firm Hill Dickinson has experienced a sustained period of growth in recent years, with its London office playing an important role. Having previously reduced its London office from three floors to two, the firm is now approaching capacity again and expects its headcount in the capital to continue increasing.

At the same time, Hill Dickinson has a lease event approaching, requiring the firm to consider how much space it will need in future and what that space should look like.

For Keith Feeny, Chief Technology Officer at Hill Dickinson, one requirement was fundamental: decisions needed to be based on reliable evidence rather than assumptions.

“We want to make sure that the decisions we make are well informed. Having that empirical data behind us means that we are able to base the decisions that we make on growth, and on the size of any new floorplate, on information that we know is correct.”

The firm had previously conducted a manual occupancy study in London related to an earlier lease event. This time, however, it wanted a much richer picture of how the office was actually being used.

 Moving from perception to evidence

Hill Dickinson commissioned Abintra to carry out a 12-week sensor-based occupancy survey of its London office.

The objective was not simply to establish an overall utilisation figure. The firm wanted to understand occupancy by team and business group, identify where the greatest demand and pressure points occurred, and examine how patterns changed both during the working day and across the week.

This was particularly important because perceptions of office utilisation do not necessarily correspond with reality.

As Keith Feeny explains:

“We wanted to look at patterns of work and movement through the day to understand if perceptions of how spaces were being used were accurate.”

The survey also enabled Hill Dickinson to explore questions such as whether people were working flexible hours, which teams were experiencing the greatest pressure on space, and how desks and meeting facilities were being used.

The sensor data was combined with interviews and a physical occupancy study, allowing Hill Dickinson to compare what people said they needed with evidence of how the workplace was actually being used.

A clearer picture of hybrid working

The results confirmed some of Hill Dickinson’s expectations but also provided a much more detailed picture of its London working patterns.

One particularly clear finding was the difference between different days of the week. Office attendance is concentrated strongly between Tuesday and Thursday, with lower demand on Mondays and Fridays as anticipated.

London also appears to experience stronger office attendance than some of Hill Dickinson’s other locations.

The survey revealed that peak occupancy was higher than it had anticipated. A previous physical study had recorded peak occupancy of around 61%. The latest survey indicated that peak levels had moved into the 70% range, with some individual teams occasionally experiencing desk occupancy in the 80% and 90% range.

That matters because the firm has considerably more people in London than it did when the earlier study was conducted and expects further growth.

Rather than relying on a single average occupancy figure, Hill Dickinson now has evidence showing where and when pressure on its workplace actually occurs.

Rethinking the mix of workplace space

The study is also helping Hill Dickinson consider what type of space it will need in future.

One emerging conclusion is that the traditional mix of meeting rooms may no longer reflect how people work.

When Hill Dickinson created its current London client facilities, larger 12-person meeting rooms formed an important part of the workplace. The evidence now points towards greater demand for smaller, six-person meeting rooms, while retaining the ability to accommodate larger seminars when required.

The firm is also seeing a requirement for more one and two-person spaces and quiet areas on its working floors.

With higher levels of occupancy, the ability for someone to move away from their desk to make a confidential telephone call, hold a virtual meeting or undertake focused work becomes increasingly important.

The findings support experience from Hill Dickinson’s more recently designed offices in Leeds and Manchester, where individual booths and dedicated focus areas have already been incorporated.

“Being able to break away and find somewhere quiet to have a telephone call or undertake a meeting is going to be more important because we’re seeing those spaces occupied fully.”

The data is therefore doing more than indicating how much space Hill Dickinson may require. It is helping inform what that space needs to contain.

Right-sizing future space

Hill Dickinson is still analysing the survey alongside its projected headcount growth, so Keith Feeny is cautious about attaching a specific financial saving to the exercise.

The more important commercial benefit is the ability to make a better-informed decision about the amount of London space the firm ultimately takes.

With forecasts available from Hill Dickinson’s three principal business groups, the project team can apply the utilisation findings to future headcount scenarios.

The aim is to ensure that the firm has sufficient capacity to accommodate growth without acquiring more expensive London office space than it actually needs.

“We’ll extrapolate the findings of the survey onto those headcount considerations so that we’re making sure that we’re right-sizing, as opposed to going too big in terms of the space that we need as we grow.”

The findings have already fed into Hill Dickinson’s search for future premises and are helping to validate the criteria being used to identify potentially suitable buildings.

Why Hill Dickinson selected Abintra

Hill Dickinson considered several occupancy measurement solutions before selecting Abintra.

The decision ultimately came down to the combination of information provided and the cost of obtaining it.

Keith Feeny says some alternative solutions were considerably more expensive without appearing to provide additional useful information. Others were available at a similar cost but did not provide the same depth of data.

“When we looked at what we would get from a cost-effective perspective, from a value perspective, Abintra was significantly better in terms of that value-for-money piece.”

While Keith Feeny describes an occupancy survey of this type as an investment, he believes the quality of information it provides makes that investment worthwhile, particularly when it is supporting potentially significant property decisions in the London market.

Straightforward implementation

For Hill Dickinson, the practical experience of implementing the survey was equally important.

Installation was completed within a matter of hours and caused no significant issues. Once data collection began, Hill Dickinson worked with Abintra’s technical team to ensure the information was being presented in the most useful way.

This included helping the team understand the reporting portal and providing the different views of the data required to address Hill Dickinson’s key workplace questions.

Keith Feeny describes the process as pleasingly straightforward for the implementation of a technology-based solution:

“It’s been great. It’s been really straightforward. The implementation went really smoothly. There were no real snags. They said it would take a few hours; it took a few hours.”

And, he adds:

“It’s been really quite painless, which, from a technical perspective, using a technical solution isn’t always the way.”

Turning workplace decisions into evidence-based decisions

For Hill Dickinson, the value of the survey lies not in producing data for its own sake, but in providing credible evidence that can be used in significant business decisions.

The findings will form part of the wider information presented to Hill Dickinson’s executive team and board as the firm considers its future London property requirements.

That gives the business a stronger basis for deciding how much space it needs, how that space should be configured and how it can accommodate further growth.

For Keith Feeny, that is what ultimately justifies the investment.

“The information it gives you and the decisions it supports mean that the cost is well worth the investment.”

Having compared a number of alternatives, he is equally clear about Hill Dickinson’s experience of Abintra:

“From a value-for-money perspective, Abintra was the right choice for us.”

At a glance

Client: Hill Dickinson
Sector: Legal services
Location: London
Project: 12-week workplace occupancy survey
Business challenge: Planning for significant London growth and a future lease event
What the survey examined: Desk and meeting-space utilisation, occupancy by team and business group, peak demand, working patterns and movement through the working day
Key findings: Strong Tuesday-to-Thursday demand; higher-than-expected peak occupancy; significant pressure within some teams; changing requirements for meeting rooms and quiet/focus spaces
Business value: Reliable empirical evidence to inform workplace design, building search criteria, future space requirements and executive and board-level property decisions