Registers of Scotland, St Vincent Plaza, Glasgow

Graven worked collaboratively with Registers of Scotland (RoS) to design and deliver their new ‘Platform’ at St Vincent Plaza, Glasgow (17,294 sq ft) – a smart working environment to support the organisation’s digital transformation programme, relocating staff from their previous Glasgow and Edinburgh offices without impacting on the delivery and quality of their public service.

The project is conceived not as an office but as a physical platform that creates a physical focal point for the staff and public with the space, equipment, tools and software to support the process of digital transformation being carried out by Registers of Scotland.

The design concept centres around physical and graphical means of defining ownership of land, with both constructed forms and cartographic marks being points of reference in the definition of the varied work settings.

In this way the space is thought of as an elevated portion of landscape that becomes divided into ‘plots’ and ‘terrains’, with an underlying layout based on the ‘Ell’, the historical Scottish unit of land measurement and a material palette inspired by the colours and textures of Scottish rural and urban, modern and traditional landscapes.

Graven’s creative, solutions-based, approach to drive practical benefits and implement SMART working principles was facilitated by the British Standards (BSI) PAS 3000 Code of Practice, which came into effect in 2015.

Andy Lake, Author of PAS 3000 Code of Practice for Smart Working commented on the design and implementation of the new offices at St Vincent’s Plaza “I think it is terrific – one of the most appealing and high quality offices for new ways of working that I’ve seen and I hope Graven get to do many more of them”.

Ross Hunter said “The Client has a clear long term vision of how they will work and that is very much informed by their “Agile” principles developed through their IT and digital processes. PAS 3000 supports that thinking.

“Registers of Scotland recognises that old style “waterfall” management of projects can be cumbersome and detrimental to fast and flexible processes, and encouraged us to move very quickly towards a “minimum viable solution” they to invest focus and energy in refining that solution so far as we could in the timescale and budget.

“So, in spite of a brief that was relatively high level in terms of detail and metrics, Graven was able to use its experience to speculate options and solutions that could quickly be tested then either discarded or refined.

“It created a really positive and energising atmosphere in the project team – with lots of space for creativity and pragmatism, without the dead hand of Excel hovering over every decision.”

Following the new SMART ways of working being adopted at the RoS ‘Digital Platform’ in Glasgow, Graven is currently undertaking a work study reviewing the RoS Edinburgh HQ accommodation. The objective of the study is to review the impact SMART working will have on future staff capacities and to make future recommendations on space budgets and adjacencies.