dunnhumby - case study

“One hundred years later it is wonderful that we have completed the original plan and created a fantastic work space for us to bring our innovation in data and science to revolutionise the 21st Century, as the motor car revolutionised the 20th Century."

Back in 2014, IE was appointed to provide space planning, furniture services and moves management for customer science company, dunnhumby. Its new HQ was being created in an iconic, grade II listed, former Model T Ford garage and showroom in Hammersmith.

IE helped dunnhumby to complete a feasibility study for the proposed building to check it met requirements from a furniture and design ‘playbook’ produced with architects Gensler in the US. However, when the US part of dunnhumby was sold in 2015, a local design company, FDA was brought in and the brief changed significantly.

Much of the playbook was modified and IE was asked to interpret the new designs, selecting existing and new furniture to match themes that had been set for different areas.

IE used more than 50 supplier partners to find the perfect furniture mix to meet the aspirations and budget of dunnhumby and FDA.

The new office layout was designed around the move to agile working in a modern and innovative workspace that encouraged collaboration. IE implemented a desking solution that was able to flex the number of available workstations and accommodate population spikes for new project teams. ‘Day 1’, ‘Nudge’ and ‘Cosy’ gave three different desk configurations that could be easily swapped out to create more or less desking as needed.

dunnhumby moved into the completed office in August 2016. The end result provides a fantastic agile working space that offers a combination of individual, collaboration and client hosting spaces including a cafe, conference facilities and gym.

Services

• Furniture Solutions
• Workplace Design

Specifications

Location: Hammersmith, London
Size of project: 115,000 sq ft, 1,000 people
Value: £750,000
Project team: Gensler / FDA

Drivers

• Attraction and retention of employees
• Encourage cross-collaboration of teams
• Move from assigned desks to agile working
• Align with how employees are working -  more homeworkers
• Need to cope with population spikes for new projects

Outcomes

• Flexible desking using Day 1, Nudge and Cosy concept
• More collaboration areas
• Departmental neighbourhoods
• Agile working space
• Allocated lockers
• More choice and control of work settings