The workplace adapts poorly to growth when it has been designed only for the present. Anyone facing an expansion in headcount without having planned alternative scenarios runs into the same problem cyclically: a layout already saturated, a meeting impossible to hold, people looking for a place to sit. Growth is not an event – it is a variable to govern from the design stage onwards.
Why space plays catch-up with headcount
The problem starts upstream: most layouts are sized on current headcount, with a generic margin at most. When new people arrive, the space is already saturated. Every urgent reorganisation has a cost – building works, operational disruption, lost time – that recurs every time headcount crosses the next threshold. Scenario planning breaks this cycle: instead of reacting, you decide in advance how the space transforms and under what conditions.
Building scenarios: from conservative to visionary
The ARCHIlabs method for growth starts from the data gathered through interviews and a survey: current headcount, actual attendance, activities and work settings in use. From there we build alternative scenarios – a conservative one, an intermediate one, an expansive one. Each scenario produces a different layout, with a calibrated mix of fixed workstations, desk sharing and shared areas. The BOMA standard provides the efficiency parameters that make each scenario comparable: m² per person, ratio between individual and support space, capacity to absorb peaks. The result is a design that already knows where to act first, and with what impact, when growth materialises.
Measured flexibility
Flexibility does not mean leaving everything open or renting empty m² and waiting. It means designing precise margins of reconfigurability: partitions that move, support areas that change function, shared work settings that raise their utilisation rate without increasing the floor area. Measurement is the key figure – knowing how many additional workstations the current layout absorbs before it requires a structural change, and at what cost. A scalable space designed on real data is less costly, over time, than a space that is subjected to growth.
When the whole company grows
When an industrial company grows, it has usually expanded by additions: first the shed, then the offices. The moment comes to look at it as a whole and rethink it with a single design. We cover this in Integrated offices and production: designing the entire company.