During the cold weather at the beginning of the year we had numerous staff unable to get into the office.  It forced us to look at the practicalities of working from home once again…

Our rationale when we looked at this before was that architecture was a team event. We felt great creativity was best achieved in a collaborative environment and that quality assurance could only be successfully implemented if we sat next to each other.  It was an approach that seemed to be shared by many of our clients who preferred us to co-locate to their offices whenever possible. The approach also meant we didn’t have to consider whether we trusted someone to put in a full day’s work with all the excitement of ‘home’ around them. Our arrangements quickly evaporated when a third of the office couldn’t get into work.

Under examination, the notion of collaborative work was quickly dismissed. If your office is anything like ours the collaborative banter between architects has been replaced with a row of silent employees plugged into their favourite background music while working at computers. Productivity is great and concentration is high, but it’s quiet.

What about quality assurance? Well, some of the technology we put in place to work effectively with our Abu Dhabi office easily solved this one. We can share drawings in a real time environment, talk to people and see them through video conferencing, and share our quality assurance and health and safety documentation – and much more – through our internet based management system.

So it seemed to come down to two things; team creativity and trust. No matter how good your virtual team world is, there is no substitute for getting together to brainstorm ideas.  Collective creativity ensures ideas are stronger, more inclusive and more broadly supported.

However, it doesn’t need to happen all the way through a project every day of the week. So there is still flexibility here.  The real stumbling block is do we trust people to do a full day’s work?  The answer is of course yes, no and maybe. However, as we strive to be one of the better employers and encourage more parents to return to work it is certainly something we intend to implement if the role allows.

Phil Holden is managing director of Pascall+Watson architects