IRD Call Centre
The Inland Revenue Department had a taxing brief for us – to provide a state of the art, cutting-edge call centre, at a time when call centres were still largely just an expansion of traditional office facilities.
We were initially engaged to undertake a feasibility study on the development of a 300 seat contact centre for the IRD at a location in New Zealand to be determined by the study. Following analysis, a 3000m2 floor plate at the New Zealand Post building in Wellington was selected and design was commissioned.
Because call centre design was still new in New Zealand at the time, we required all the design consultants tendering for the work to seek international expertise , particularly from Australia and the UK. The team that was successful worked in conjunction with a specialist call centre design company from Australia.
The IRD wanted to provide a superior staff environment – not too difficult in a huge space with a high roof and extensive views of Wellington and the harbour. Every staff member was to have a view, and desks needed to be set up so that staff could easily reconfigure them if they so wished.
Because it was a fairly new concept, the design had to be very flexible to allow for anticipated changes. After undertaking cost benefit analysis, the decision was made to create an access floor - tiled flooring that sits above the base concrete floor, with space between for all the office cabling. This meant that when desks needed to be moved, the necessary tiles were simply lifted up, the cables and powerpoints for that desk moved to the new space, and the tiles replaced again.
To achieve the desired outcome, we realised early on that the scope of the project would have to be expanded. Unfortunately, the timeline stayed the same, requiring some innovative time management strategies. Working to a fast-track five-month deadline, we chopped up the design programme and began construction work long before the design had been completed.
The resulting facility delivered the desired cutting-edge call centre with maximum space flexibility and superior staff environment.