What can corporate real estate learn from the sports and entertainment industry?

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need for the office to become a destination and more than a physical space that brings people together. The experience of going to the office needs to be a great one; the environment should be designed to promote a person’s/ team’s performance, supplemented by technology to allow those creative sparks to be shared — all with a greater focus on the health and safety of building occupants and lower operational costs. This paper discusses how enhancing the user experience and adopting an efficiency to operations approach when thinking about space contributes to making the workplace a great place to work. The paper uses examples from ME Engineers’ work designing building services and technology systems for some of the most notable sports and entertainment facilities in the world, where venues have invested heavily in the customer experience to compete against at-home and virtual environments.