Improving the efficiency of office use

The UK Government released "Improving the efficiency of central government's office property", 28 November 2007. This found that offices ranged from 13.3 to 21.9 square metres per person and recommended a ‘standard’ of 12 m² per person. This is calculated from the Net Internal Area (the area within a building measured to the internal surface of the perimeter walls at each floor level), not just the floor space of individual offices. For comparison, The Pentagon was designed for 11.6 m² per person. Offices are designed with provision for paper storage, and more recently for computer installation. Assuming that most paper is replaced with computer storage and the computer storage is located off site, the size of offices should be able to be reduced by about one third, down to 8 m² per person. Efficient design of desks should be able to reduce this further in open plan offices.