Planning and Purchasing of Modular Office Furniture

The process of purchasing new office furniture can be a daunting task. When the people in your office learn that you are about to convert to modular office furniture each one of them will have an idea of how it should look when complete. And in most cases the ideas will not be complementary. This is why it is best to enlist the services of a professional office designer to assist you in the layout and planning for the modular office furniture conversion.

Once the professional office planner is on-board, this is the time to start gathering the employees’ ideas, as well as your own ideas, about how the finished office should look. This is a very important step in your purchasing process since the employees will be the ones using the furniture day-in and day-out.

Part of the design process will be to establish what each person needs in both perceived and actual layouts. Modular office furniture needs to support the work flow and the communications flow in an office. This will definitely save a lot of time and money down the road.

How is each employee’s own work structured and how much space will be reasonably needed to accomplish it? A person that routinely reviews blueprints of building projects will need more layout or work surface room than a person whose primary job is to do data entry.

The modular office furniture layout will take into consideration the professional relationships of one job description to another. Do they need to confer on a regular basis or is there an orderly flow that goes from one space to the next? Do they need to have other people in for conferences or is it normal for them to work alone? Will a group conference room work better than individuals having their own conference area in their cubicle? Will there be a need for private conversations that others in the office should not be privy too?

Once the data has been collected it is simply a matter of matching the modular office furniture with the tasks that need to be accomplished. If you can furnish the professional planner with an architect’s drawings for you building it will be best.

Be prepared for several reviews of the modular office furniture layout. The preliminary review should involve the staff as a whole. Then as the design is refined everyone will be knowledgeable about the process.

With a thorough plan in place, the modular office furniture can be ordered and installed. The people using the spaces created will have the best chance of satisfaction because they were all instrumental in the plan development.

Ty Hammell is a distributor of home appliances and electronics and shares his insights about purchasing these items.