Following substantial business expansion, Advertising & Marketing network, McCann Worldgroup UK needed to refurbish their listed HQ building to provide inspirational collaborative space for all agencies based both in Herbrand Street and from other locations across the UK & Europe.
McCann took this opportunity to improve the efficiency of their workspace to accommodate the needs of a growing and diverse workforce with new spaces for them to come together to both work and socialise as well as greatly improving facilities for client meetings and entertaining.
Due to the nature of their industry, delivering good quality meeting space, client-facing facilities and collaboration areas were key objectives for this project. With their existing premises lacking all three requirements, the refurbishment needed to create a number of new working platforms to enhance communications as well as better utilise some of the meeting and breakout spaces they already had.
Working closely with McCann’s creative director and their FM team, we delivered a Cat B refurbishment of two key floors whilst it remained in operation.
The reinvigorated workplace provides a number of collaboration and meeting options for a workforce totalling around 750. The lower ground floor’s original tea point and walkthrough meeting space has been replaced with client-facing meeting rooms and a new breakout area, including rail-carriage style work booths which have been a great hit. Another area provides a flexible meeting space doubling up for evening classes including yoga and exercise clubs.
The fourth floor was completely reconfigured due to the dated meeting suite being used inefficiently and not reflecting the strong agency culture. One out of the two existing wings of meeting facilities was knocked down to create a town-hall meeting space for the entire building. Featuring a large circular table in the centre of the space, the area has been designed to provide a catering facility for their employees, encourage collaboration across teams and alleviate pressure from formal meeting spaces.
The remaining meeting rooms have been upgraded to reflect the new space and ensure they connect and add to the agency vision. With access to newly landscaped outside terraces, which holds cinema nights for clients & employees, the multi-functional community space now provides a platform for informal team catch-ups, client meetings and product launches inside and out.
Due to the project needing to be completed in extremely tight timescales, the design and construction elements had to run concurrently to ensure that the project was delivered on time. In addition, as the works were carried out whilst the building was in operation, the Christmas holiday period was maximised so that the disruption to employees was minimised.