Engineering Office Layout. 11

[Rodger Furey]

My company is going to renovate the engineering office (12 people) with new cubicles.
Currently, we have solid 61" high cubicles from the 1970s (at least, that's what they look like)
Engineers tend to recluse themselves in their hide-aways, which doesn't help with communication and collaboration.

The question is - high, mid or low cubicles?

Most of the engineers would prefer high, but that doesn't change anything. We're just updating the furniture.
The engineering manager (me) would prefer mid or low.

Any thoughts on the pros and cons of each configuration? (see attached file for some graphics)

 

[GregLocock]

First place I worked had an office (Industrial Engineering) set up just like school. Big desk at the front where the supervisor sat facing us all, and just rows of desks. Luckily I only had to work there for 6 weeks. Mind you 30 years ago that's still how drawing offices were set up. The iron rule there was no loud conversations, enforced with mighty enthusiastic "Shhh". That is an example of a bad layout, since if the design engineers wanted to talk about the design with the drafter (pretty much the most important part of the job) they had to do so in whispers and murmurs, and of course speakerphone calls to suppliers or whatever were impossible.

On the other hand when we had 2 engineers working with 2 CAD guys in our own little office all working on the same thing that worked really well.

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[rb1957]

"What is the point of deliberately pissing them off?" ... if not that, then what is the point to being in management ?

ah greg ! ... did your first job come with oars too ? ah, to good ole drafting office ... white shirts and ties.
What do you mean we need quite places to concentrate (that don't have white porcelain seats) ? No, no ... we must be out communicating our own pointless point of view ...

"Hoffen wir mal, dass alles gut geht !"
General Paulus, Nov 1942, outside Stalingrad after the launch of Operation Uranus.

 

[GregLocock]

The IE job was unbelievable. We had to /estimate/ the build time for a given vehicle, process by process, because we weren't allowed to go on the assembly line and time them. This was done in pencil in big ledgers. At home we had a PET clone computer, so I spent a day roughing out how you could use a computer to do this ridiculous job. The manager liked it so much he wanted me to stay on!

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[RobWard]

Engineers - surely some sort of adjustable system is what is required here?
Imagine electronically raised and lowered partitions.
And they don't have to be manually adjusted - think what could be achieved with a suite of sensors monitoring, noise, temperature (draughts), light, body odour, etc.....

"I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go past." Douglas Adams

 

[ctopher]

We have low cubicle walls. I have to wear headphones (classic rock) to drown out the partying and loud giggling coming from planners, buyers, sales.
I don't know how they get work done!

Chris, CSWP
SolidWorks
ctophers home

 

[Christine74]

Sadly the people making the decisions about the Floor Plan are managers who tend to be more extraverted and typically haven't done technical work requiring intense focus for years (if ever). So of course they opt for low-walled cubicles every time.


-Christine

 

[rb1957]

this is a typical engineering "lose-lose" situation ... very few if any people will be happy with the result.

Management will complain about the cost of the change, and not seeing any commensurate increase in productivity.

Most staff will complain either because they don't like the new configuration, preferred the old configuration, didn't get what they wanted, or just want to complain.

More people will work from home. Let's see how long that option (working form home) survives. I like the convenience but I feel it diminishes the "group" identity/association that coming into the office fosters.

"Hoffen wir mal, dass alles gut geht !"
General Paulus, Nov 1942, outside Stalingrad after the launch of Operation Uranus.

 

[Gr8blu]

First office: purely temporary. I had a desk and chair on the second floor landing of a 4-floor-plus basement stairwell. All the entry noise from below (where the sales folks entered the building) and the constant up/down from people going to the historical files (floors 3 and 4, and the basement) were more than a bit distracting - and there was absolutely no privacy, which doesn't bother me personally all that much. Then again, I was a young engineer just starting out.

Second office: same company, but now a "semi-open" environment. Defined one-to-a-cubes for engineers, with 4-foot metal walls topped by 1 foot privacy (i.e. rippled) glass on three sides, with the fourth side open to the aisle. Drafters were four-to-a-cubes, with open space in the middle and the drafters arrayed around the cube periphery, The drafters' wall facing the aisle was partial - basically just long enough to keep things from falling off their desks into the aisle. Both openings faced directly across from each other. Communication between all parties (engineer-to-engineer, engineer-to-drafter, and drafter-to-drafter was clean and happened easily.

Third office: new employer. Typical 90s version of office space - fabric covered partitions about 6 feet high on three sides, with a half-length wall on the aisle side and no actual door. All cubes were arranged as mirror images, meaning that if one had the door on the left, the next had the door on the right so that they had to pass by each other every time they entered/exited. Also, all openings were directly across the aisle from the opposing set of offices, so all four movements were readily visible.

Current office: 8-foot hard walls with glass door. This is necessary because I am no longer in an "office" environment. I am out in the approximate middle of the production facility. The door is to cut down on the manufacturing noise, not the "people" noise. Plus it gives me the benefit of being able to "wave away" an unwanted distraction if necessary - not that I do that all that often, as my job is to support the floor operations. (I tend to adhere to the "open door" policy in terms of availability, even if I actually close the door because of external noise.) The other benefit of the present setup is that I can lock up the equipment (several tens of thousands of dollars of test gear, and some moderately-irreplaceable component samples) whenever I have to travel - which is fairly frequently.

All above listed configurations have had their uses (and abuses) during my career. As responsibility/sensitivity of the work increases, so does the necessity for privacy.

Converting energy to motion for more than half a century

 

[drawoh]

Gr8blu,

For a college summer job, I was working on a drafting board in a trailer. When anyone entered the door, the trailer would shake, and I would mess up my lettering.

Did I mention the grizzly bears?

--
JHG

 

[geesaman.d]

Something as simple as cubicle walls - is really a very big question.

I once endured an 'efficiency' consultant who insisted that open office / high collaboration layouts were the best thing for everyone. It became clear after a couple of days he relied on collaboration to do *anything*. He did not understand what deep work is or how important it can be, and he tried to enforce a design philosophy that made interruption the norm rather than the exception. He intended to make it hell on anyone whose work is strongly disrupted by interruptions and distractions, and made it sound like the need to concentrate uninterrupted was just personal preference, we were being old-fashioned, and you can't knock it until you try it.

I'm sure he made good money going into companies where the culture was workers using cubicle walls as territorial boundaries and barriers to working with others. I don't think my company had a serious problem with that - at least not serious enough to break apart the technical team, intersperse them among the sales team, and prevent the technical team from completing their deep work. There's a lot more to that story and context but suffice it to say, it didn't happen as our "expert" consultant had planned. What actually happened was a hybrid, wherein the team that handled countless little transactions per day and relied heavily on collaboration, took away their cubicle walls and it largely worked for them. The highly technical teams that handled a few transactions per day kept their cubicle walls and were actually moved across the building entirely. Based on the lack of complaints about the new distance between those teams, I conclude it must not have been the problem.

I see 'open office' philosophy to be well suited for business processes that are highly variable, constantly shifting and evolving, and hard to pattern. If your business and workers are happiest chatting on Slack or Teams, open-office will complement that environment. Agility and flexibility is good, provided it doesn't undercut your ability to execute core business. There are plenty of <derogatory term redacted> people who use open-office as a cure-all (quick win at best) for a lack of good processes. So be very careful that teams don't take advantage of open-office to skip the critical business processes or pass along work before it's ready with an innocent-sounding "I'm sure you'll have questions, I'll be right over there". This only really works when there are suitable processes and they are being followed and every transaction remains fully, properly documented.

The question is a form-follows-function one: does everyone in your office feel welcomed to visit another worker or another department? Do your deep-work people fall back on headphones with music to actively ignore what's going on around them? In any given team, how many minutes/hours per day do they need to be actively collaborating?

 

[IRstuff]

I finally took the time to download the images. Nix on the low, although the cops on TV seem to be OK with that sort of arrangement. Maybe for the mid; I would vote for the high, just to force your managers to do MbWA by actually "walking around"

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list

http://www.eng-tips.com/forumlist.cfm

 

[hydtools]

Work on your plan to manage the mini-revolt.

Ted

 

[Strong]

With only 12 people, why not list the most common selection issues, then discuss and then ALL can vote. If there is a common choice, then do it. If not, then the manager can make the choice explain why, and then move on. My opinion of the pictured cubical is that it for telemarketers and not for engineers!

Some selection issues might be in no order:
Noise (ventilation, elevators, outside traffic, and voices)
Function(desk space, wall hanging space, and book/file storage)
Lighting
Heating and Cooling
Interuptions (passerbys stop and talk)
Safety (fire egress)

I was very glad to get out of the cubical environment years ago!
Walt

 

[hydtools]

Low walls will become trahylooking with all the stuff people will put there to 'personalize their space.

Ted

 

[mfgenggear]

OP
Briefly read some of the Very hot topic.

First of all your the man, your door should be open to all guys.

Second engineering in my book old g style
Should be quite and away from noise and interruptions.

Third all communications should be written.
Not verbally, old g saying avoid verbal orders
Or AVO. Definitely and communication with engineering should always be written

In my eyes privacy matters. So what if guys relax some times and kick their legs up.
What matters are the task and projects being compleated

My recommendation, keep your crew happy and they will cover your back.
Take them out to lunch once in a while..

And PS it doesn't take much to walk around a cubicle to ask for help.