The Latest and Greatest Innovations in Maintenance and Cleaning
At Professional Choice Cleaning we invest time reading up and studying about manufacturing facilities and commercial office buildings. Spending time on articles and content about this is what helps us stay current with the latest and greatest innovations in maintenance and cleaning. However, we occasionally find an article that intrigues us more than most, because it isn’t just something that can help us improve our services but makes us think about the future of those services as well.
There was a recent architectural competition which was named “The Office Building of The Future”. It looked into how demographic changes are going to alter the way we work, as well as the very buildings that people work in, as the Baby Boomers start retiring, and the Millennials begin dominating the workforce.
There were four different architectural firms that won the competition, and they all presented some ideas that seemed kind of wild. Keep in mind though, that a decade or so ago, everyone thought smartphones were wild ideas, and now nearly everyone has one.
We noted a handful of common themes seen throughout the building designs that won:
First, these buildings are friendly to both pedestrians and public transit. That could mean things like more on-site access points to buses and trains, or just better accessibility of surrounding structures through walkways, which were both exposed to nature’s elements or enclosed in order to provide protection from them.
Secondly, these buildings were actually rather flexible, so they could be reconfigured easily, both inside and out. That might mean offices that could just be picked up and then moved around inside the building, or building sections intended to be modules that could get moved around and then reattached, almost like the building blocks that kids play with.
Third, these buildings also proved to be environmentally sustainable. That happened in how they were built, but also how they were operated. Some had windmills, and others collected and reused rainwater in deliberate cisterns in order to keep energy costs down and minimize carbon footprints.
Another interesting point is that many buildings were smaller than we’re used to, and we believe the underlying assumption here is that as more people work remotely, given all the available technology, then smaller building sizes are possible.
Multiple Tenants in a Single Building …
One of the participating firms pointed out that small businesses in particular account for half of the current private sector, and they don’t have the networking power or resources to collaborate easily with other businesses, meaning it’s more likely that a building could be set up with multiple tenants who are small businesses. This kind of setup would easily allow for networking and collaboration, and there could even be on-site amenities such as coffee shops and restaurants that help them do this. In order to ease the stress and demands of modern lifestyles, such buildings might even have amenities such as daycare, elder care, and dry cleaning on-site.
We find this all quite fascinating because we constantly strive to improve our offered services, which means that understanding what the buildings of the future are like helps us get ready for what’s coming. If that winds up being us having to learn how to power wash rainwater cisterns or clean movable office modules, then we’re all for it!
At Professional Choice Cleaning Services we handle a wide range of facility maintenance and commercial building services. Contact us today to see how we can help!