All aboard – bringing Network Rail together

• United 3,500 employees under one roof, closing 15 buildings nationwide and relocating 2,700 staff to Network Rail’s new headquarters in Milton Keynes.] 
• Created a modern, ergonomical work environment fit for the future with features including retail space, a food court, health club, and knowledge centre.  
• Delivered the fitout phase in half the time typically taken, saved money by moving people out of office in time to capitalise on lease agreements while still achieving efficiency targets.

Network Rail’s new national centre in Milton Keynes now provides office accommodation and support facilities for up to 3,500 Network Rail employees. 
 
As programme and project managers, our challenge was to increase employee productivity and reduce costs. Rather than having employees spread across several under-utilised offices, Network Rail wanted to bring people together into a single location to drive savings of approximately £30m a year. 
 
By analysing how each team worked and auditing the unoccupied space across Network Rail’s estate, we redesigned the internal layout of the new building to maximise flexibility and standardised working practices. 
 
The new offices support Network Rail's aspiration to accelerate the pace of cultural change across the business, through a change programme that brings the right people together into a single location. The programme also offered a shared working environment based around an average employee to desk ratio of 7:10. 
 
Business continuity was paramount, therefore we planned workforce transition and location planning around service delivery. We released floors and buildings in phases built around critical business milestones and with an emphasis on operational readiness.