Intergration of the concept of shared workspaces to office buildings in Sri Lanka

Abstract

The concept of space is quite complicated and makes it difficult to define. To achieve the organization’s optimum goal the space that is available for work need to be well organized and designed. Shared workspace concept defined as membership based workspaces where diverse groups work together in shared, communal setting. There are certain scenarios where existing office buildings with un-utilized floor spaces. Therefore this study is targeting to solve this issue by checking the adaptability of the shared workspace concept for the selected space in an office building. The aim of this study is to develop a framework to identify the adaptability of shared workspace for office buildings in Sri Lanka. The objectives of this research identify shared workspace concept, need of the concept for an office building, the characteristics that a building must consist to adopt the concept, enablers’, barriers and recommendations to overcome the barriers. Along with a literature review qualitative research approach was adopted by using expert interviews and two case studies. Content analysis used to analysis the findings of the study. This study provides evidence, by only having an unutilized space won’t make an office building eligible to adopt shared workspace concept. To adopt this concept to an office building it must have certain characteristics, those are respect to office type, organization culture, core business, operating hours, support structure, accessibility. The barriers have been identified in relation to financial and consistency of the business as lack of privacy, noise level, monitoring and controlling of space, availability of a support structure, matching all the co-workers expectations as whole, legal and regulatory barriers. The solutions were supported from experts’ ideas/opinions and findings from case studies. Ultimately a framework was developed to check the adaptability of shared workspace for office buildings in Sri Lanka. Keywords: Barriers, Drivers, Office building, Shared workspace, Sustainable facilities, Sri lanka