Concluding the Dialogue: Championing Continued Engagement and Knowledge Sharing.

Our final article in the series covering the BCO Dialogue held in Birmingham draws conclusions on the event as well as positively looking forward, as to the ways and benefits of encouraging further valuable engagement.

The purpose of the Dialogues is to share some of the BCO’s topical and current research in a timely and streamlined fashion; the outcome and added value coming from the diversity of the voices of those in the room. As a Professional Services collective, responsible for shaping our built environments, we inevitably collaborate with a mixture of disciplines across the duration of a project at each Work Stage, engaging and sharing ideas at design team meetings, via email, calls, site walk-arounds etc. The process generally holds a level of structure, order and timing, and rightly so.  

Encouragement and pursuit of broader, more holistic conversations however, are likely to feature less so in our day-to-day delivery, but considering some of the insightful outcomes of the recent Dialogue, these types of engagements could provide substantial added value and knowledge-share, on to our clients as well as our wider eco-system. Perhaps these types of engagements could be considered industry wide ‘water-cooler’ moments.

These broader, multi-disciplinary conversations could be complementary to the day-to-day of collaboration, design and delivery and further, as we see a push towards ‘providing better’ and ‘responding better’ to CX(customer experience) in the services we design and deliver, this multidisciplinary ‘feedback loop’ looks to become an essential element.

Some of the BCO’s latest research and associated report ‘Towards Experience Utopia’ highlights best practice across the UK office sector, with strong themes throughout, being formed around multi-faceted delivery of service, from Landlord to FM to Front of House, all having critical parts to play in curating great customer service. Our ‘customers’ are the users of the spaces we design; a bad experience of these spaces is far from ideal in what is a saturated market and requires thoughtful resolution, likely requiring consulting across the disciplines, which initiatives such as the BCO Dialogues encourages.

We are excited by what our built environments can provide our communities as well as the wider reaching positive impacts this brings. This can ultimately be achieved, as the BCO Dialogues demonstrate, , through thoughtful and open dialogue across the disciplines on a regular basis, seeking honest opinion from all those invested in and contributing to, the pursuit of inclusive, tailored and responsible environments for us all to thrive within.