Urban Utilities - a dynamic, future-state workplace

The head office fitout for Urban Utilities embraces today’s hybrid working environment and expresThe head office fitout for Urban Utilities in the new Lumina building in Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley, embraces today’s hybrid environment and expresses the water company’s purpose ‘enriching the quality of life.’ Its progressive design supports business activities to occur in a way that best suits each individual or group activity and ultimately seeks to lift creativity, productivity and customer satisfaction. As home to one of the largest water distributor-retailers in Australia supplying drinking water, recycled water and sewerage services, Urban Utilities’ workplace is highly sustainable, flexible and technology-enabled.

Our spatial planning for the workplace’s 6,015m² floor area over three levels considered our client’s current and future physical, digital and cultural needs.
es the company’s purpose: ‘enriching the quality of life.’

Rapid project delivery 
Integration of the fitout into the design and construction of the new building required a 16-week program from stakeholder engagement to issue of the designs for construction. We proudly delivered a return brief and concept design within 10 days of project commencement and completed the design in 4-weeks. 

To incorporate the important change management process, we overlapped the briefing and design stages and supported stakeholder consultation, the CEO roadshow and staff engagement with regular video updates and floor plans embedded with QR codes enabling 3D views of spaces.

Meeting the tight schedule was achieved by our integrated, multidisciplinary global team working in partnership with Urban Utilities and Hutchinson Builders and aided by using integrated building information modelling and off-site prefabrication. The project generated substantial building credits and cost savings for our client, not least occupation three months early. 

Flexible spaces facilitating new ways of working
Each of the three floors provides quiet, team and flex zones, along with a range of presentation, collaboration, creative, workshop and social spaces clustered around an interconnecting stair. Serving as the hero element, the stair design was engineered inhouse to link and open up the space and cultivate collaboration.

To support the hybrid working model and allow employees to do different types of work throughout the day, the Urban Utilities fitout has a significant increase in collaborative, workshop and video-call settings and zones. 

Acknowledging that collaboration with colleagues is a key reason for being in the office, our spatial planning incorporated ‘flex’ zones in between neighbourhoods. We also created a large variety of unique space typologies with attention to furniture selection and arrangement that encourages collaboration. One example is the semicircular seating in the social space which also contributes to the workplace culture. 

The layout rethinks how to create spaces that contain noise and provide a balance between the physical and the virtual environment with quiet zones for concentration on focused tasks and distinct zones that cluster more active activities. 

We designed specialised spaces to facilitate Urban Utilities’ critical work around the clock, such as the network operations centre for monitoring the water and waste-water network, the control room for responding to technical incidents and an emergency room for major incidents. A flexible project space enables visiting partner organisations to collaborate with Urban Utilities’ staff on projects while the digital innovation space has provision for research and cutting-edge work displays. 

Sustainable design’s environmental and cost dividends
Designing the office to support hybrid working was an efficiency decision that resulted in financial and environmental dividends from reduced lease space and fitout materials. Similarly, multifunctional spaces like the executive hubs for use by leaders when they are in the office - and bookable by any team member outside of that – make the most of the A-grade real estate. Our modular approach to the design gives our client flexibility and the ability to repurpose spaces without major rework. An audit to identify furniture suited to reuse, refurbishment, recycling or repurposing not only diverted waste from landfill, it saved our client around $650,000 in new furniture. 

We partnered with our client to question what will enable people to work most effectively and how they’d like to work when they’re in the office. A key focus was conveying Urban Utilities’ values in the spaces of care, connection, informality, creativity, fun and warmth. The office environment instils pride in staff and enables everyone from anywhere in the organisation to feel comfortable. Spaces such as the board room, meeting rooms, training facilities and team meeting zones incorporate state-of-the-art technology, inviting employees to connect and collaborate, to work with purpose, physically and virtually. Aesthetically, the space respectfully connects the built environment to the First Nations heritage of the land on which Urban Utilities operates. The design for all abilities and neurodiversity includes dedicated quiet areas throughout the fitout.