9 October 2017 | FM World team
BIFM Awards 2017 - Innovation in Technology and Systems
A series of innovations that enabled AstraZeneca to transform its Macclesfield operations site into a technologically advanced and agile workplace able to cater for increased occupancy has seen the company succeed at this year's BIFM Awards.
Needing to account for a 20% increase in population, and continually criticised for outdated working practices, (meeting schedules being printed out at the start of each day and stuck on each meeting room door being a particular bugbear), the FM team at the pharmaceutical firm's Macclesfield office undertook a major change project.
By adopting a raft of new technologies, including touch-screen digital signage, the latest in videoconferencing solutions and motion sensors to enable the tracking of occupancy and usage, the team successfully delivered against its brief.
Innovations such as occupancy detection, realtime booking, and the ability for staff to check availability on touch screen maps around the facility has enabled significant improvements in the speed at which meeting rooms are booked and utilised.
In its Middlewood Court facility, the project freed up 5,536 rooms for reuse in the period of January - March 2017, while 6,615 have been instantly booked.
The project has also handed the FM team the tools to carry out remote and real-time monitoring of all meeting rooms, enabling early detection of any potential faults or issues, which can then be resolved before the next user enters the room. With around 1,290 meetings being held in the facility each week, such time and resource saving measures pay big dividends.
In fact, such was the success of the overall project, that AstraZeneca is now keen to roll out the solutions across their global estate. Since it was implemented, the transformation of its Macclesfield site has resulted in 5,536 rooms being released after 'no-shows', a 70% reduction in the time taken to set up rooms for video conferencing, and also enabled the monitoring and management of power consumption of 87 rooms in the facility, with any unused automated equipment being shutdown if not in use.