Service Overview
The demand for coworking space in both urban and rural town locations has gone hand-in-hand with the growth of remote and homeworking. We use our bespoke, structured need and impact approach to assess the demand for and competition to the provision of new coworking facilities in such locations.
Smart Growth Analytics help evidence the need and impact of coworking spaces to improve investment decision making and specification of the optimum provision.
Our Approach
We link our understanding of industries, occupations and employment with remote and homeworking to quantify the demand for coworking space in particular locations, most frequently town centres or rural.
Our workflow process includes:
• Definition of the local catchment area
• Evidence of local need
• Evaluation of existing nearby competition in flexible office space
• Economic impact assessment, including benefit-cost ratio, for a range of facility floor areas
Beyond considering an individual location, we can also apply this knowledge to define the benefits of sub-regional and regional intelligence networks to economic growth based on the inter-relationship between existing and new coworking spaces to be found in enterprise, science and innovation parks, universities, town centres, urban extensions, rural areas and new settlements.
Application of our Expertise
We work with providers of coworking spaces to add economic impact to the information and intelligence they use to make investment decisions on particular locations, whether conversions or new build. We have a particular relationship with Gavin Eddy of Forward Space to provide such services.
For town centre developers, such as Local Authorities seeking to regenerate the local economy, we evaluate the impact of providing coworking space, often in repurposed, existing buildings. This usually includes the establishing the Benefit-Cost Ratio of the investment and to determining the optimum floor space provision to support demand in the local catchment area. For example, our work for South Somerset Council considered the provision of coworking facilities in 3 local towns.
For land and property developers, often working as part of the multi-disciplinary team they pull together to help them unlock the sites they need or to speed up the often-lengthy timescale from conception to delivery, we bring specialist input to evaluating the impact of including coworking space as part of the development plan, alongside housing and on-site employment provision. This, combined with our in-depth understanding of how home and remote workers and the self-employed utilise coworking space to improve the effectiveness of their hybrid / tribrid working approach, enables the developer to make fully informed decisions on the most likely forms and disposition of workforce utilisation across their site. We also link this with likely in- and out-commuting profiles, links with educational institutions, and social interaction with residents. Typically, we provided these services to Summix to support their planning for a 6,500 home new sustainable community in South Oxfordshire.