Shaw | B+H, Martin’s Group, McKinley Burkhart,
December 2015
Shaw Communications - Calgary HQ
In the summer of 2012, an incident occurred at the Shaw Communications headquarters that triggered the sprinklers to release resulting in substantial water damage to the 13 floor, 450,000 square foot space. To ensure business continuity, the Facilities/Design/Strategy and Construction team rehoused all 800 corporate staff to other sites within two weeks before beginning the redesign of the Shaw headquarters.
The redesign project was led by VP of Facilities and Construction, Julie Shaw and supported by the inhouse design team (Jennifer Kahl), workplace strategy (Kathryn Roche), and construction and facilities (Troy Roberts.)
This unfortunate circumstance was an ideal opportunity to update and reface the exterior of the building, create a state-of-the-art retail location, update needed infrastructure, move data centers off site to stand alone locations or on cloud and create and curate an interior that reflected Shaw’s principles and values. Each floor was designed to support the teams housed there, with features to enable productivity, ensure inclusivity and promote wellbeing.
Key components of the design evolved from the workplace strategy that was conducted with Foster and Partners London office and implementation of the strategy was led by Julie Shaw and Kathryn Roche, supported by the inhouse team.
Throughout the project, communications and change management were essential to enable employees to adjust quickly to their temporary locations and support them when they moved into the new space. As construction and design were ongoing at the time when employees moved back in, the team implemented the “100 Days of Happiness” program which was meant to manage expectations as the building was completed and generate excitement while highlighting features of the space as they became available.
Key Workplace strategy components of the design were:
- To create a single tenant building with a central security and reception ‘check in’ on the ground floor.
- To ensure all floors were connected by open interior staircases to promote health and wellness and cross collaboration between department neighborhoods.
- To promote access to daylight, and wellness breaks through five accessible roof top patios.
- To co-locate departments into unique neighborhoods with 20% offices, 80% open plan, with a large ratio of collaboration spaces on all floors.
- To improve customer experience with a new flagship ground floor retail outlet.
- To promote internal connections through the large internal cafeteria and 12th floor coffee lounge.