A 4,000-gallon flood ripping through its offices would have seriously hampered most companies, but a Midland’s based property consultancy was up and running within four hours — thanks to its “mobile working” policy.
Plumbers working on a floor above Rider Levett Bucknall’s Birmingham premises had rigged up temporary piping for a weekend break. When it failed thousands of gallons cascaded through the ceiling, flooding the global consultancy’s Colmore Row offices below.
The 12-hour leak was eventually spotted by a passer-by, but not before it had caused more than £100,000 worth of damage to RLB’s Cathedral Court headquarters which, by a quirk of fate, had just been shortlisted for the “Best fit-out of Workplace” category in the 2014 British Council for Offices’ Midlands and East Anglia Awards.
Within hours managing partner, Nigel Mason, had emailed his 90 staff to tell them to work from home from Monday morning. “A lot of our IT is based in the cloud and we don’t have on-site servers which we implemented as part of our business continuity plan,” he explained. “I doubt we could have survived something like this five years ago.”
The property firm upgraded to its 7,250sq ft office above Barclays Bank in May last year from Millennium Point and had used the move as a chance to implement a new “clear desk” policy, which insisted staff only use mobile phones and laptops. “Just four hours into the new working week the business was working as normal,” added Mason, “and by one o’clock we had signed a contract to take temporary space at the i2 Office at Two Snowhill.
“Our continuity plan meant the move to the Queensway office went as smooth as it could be under the difficult circumstances and we were operating from our new base by Tuesday morning,” said Mason, who expects the repair work to take until the end of May.
Rider Levett Bucknall can trace its roots back to the 18th century. In 2007, after 225 years in business, it launched its global practice with the combination of the long-established companies of Rider Hunt, Levett and Bailey, and Bucknall Austin. Headquartered in Birmingham it now employs over 3,000 people in more than 100 offices across the Americas, Asia, EMEA and Oceania.
The annual British Council awards recognise outstanding office projects with regional winners being judged at a national final later in the year. RLB was shortlisted for the fitout project the consultancy carried out prior to its 2013 move to the Cathedral Court building. “I think we are in with a reasonable chance of winning and, although the staff have seen it as a bit of an adventure, this incident has shown the value of implementing a clear desk policy,” said Nigel Mason.
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