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Engineering efficiency in open plan vs seperate offices

Andy Millar
Just for once I'm working in an open plan office *. I've been, from my point of view, very lucky (or rather, very determined!) - for the last two years I've worked from home, and for 15 years prior to that I have had a succession of private offices (in a company where the official policy was that only the president and VPs had private offices!)


HOW DOES ANYONE GET ANY WORK DONE IN AN OPEN PLAN OFFICE??? Sorry, that just burst out smiley


Now, thinking back to a LONG time ago when I was working in development teams of maybe 2-3-4-5 engineers it did actually seem to work well for us, we could share and bounce around ideas, however when I started managing the same team in a large office space it was clear that those discussions were also extremely disruptive to anyone else in the same office area **. The best arrangement I've worked in for team engineering was probably when we had 5 of us in a single (fairly soundproof) office.


Equally, having been involved in business management, I am very well aware that large open plan offices are cheap and flexible, but personally I'm suspicious of the impact on overall productivity, at least for engineering functions.


I haven't even started discussing getting the air conditioning set right for everybody...


Does anyone here have any views? It's a serious point.


Right, I will stick my headphones on, play some brown noise, and try again.


Cheers,


Andy


* Our company Mentoring scheme is being audited by the IET today, hence the fact I've been asked to work at HQ and prepare to be quizzed by the IET!

** I led a raiding party and commandeered a soundproof space away from anyone else where that team could work, before any actual murders occurred. I ignored the suggestions from the rest of the engineers that it should also be made airtight...
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    We are aligned per function in an open plan environment across two floors of a building.  It's often a case of wandering a little distance to talk to other project members - although email and IM are the prime messaging methods.  Arranging by project team would be a challenge as we are a multinational company with some functions in other countries!


    Being a functional group means that if you overhear a person having a specific issue, sometimes you have experienced that issue previously and can offer a solution (or vice versa).  Being separated from everyone else sometimes means you miss out on some of the best practices.


    One of the things we were discussing the other day was if there is an efficiency of working from home (which is the ultimate separate office) over being in the open plan office.  Working from home tends to be able to avoid the routine distractions of people finding your desk or giving you a phone call, but given our multinational arrangement, not the noise of email.  But if you are home for a sick child or a workman, you obviously loose the efficiency.
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    We are aligned per function in an open plan environment across two floors of a building.  It's often a case of wandering a little distance to talk to other project members - although email and IM are the prime messaging methods.  Arranging by project team would be a challenge as we are a multinational company with some functions in other countries!


    Being a functional group means that if you overhear a person having a specific issue, sometimes you have experienced that issue previously and can offer a solution (or vice versa).  Being separated from everyone else sometimes means you miss out on some of the best practices.


    One of the things we were discussing the other day was if there is an efficiency of working from home (which is the ultimate separate office) over being in the open plan office.  Working from home tends to be able to avoid the routine distractions of people finding your desk or giving you a phone call, but given our multinational arrangement, not the noise of email.  But if you are home for a sick child or a workman, you obviously loose the efficiency.
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