Comportament dels amplificadors amb relació al soroll

The serviced office market forms a sub sector of the wider office market and includes incubator space, innovation space and more usually takes the form of small office suites, often fully furnished located within buildings or floor(s) of a building which has a fully managed reception, meeting room(s) and a selection of additional services available. The serviced office sector does not cater for small start-up companies alone, despite these offering an ideal means of moving from home into a professional environment with flexible terms and with minimal capital expense available. Established companies.

particularly during recession, that are perhaps downsizing or seeking greater flexibility in the space that they require, will often consider serviced offices as offering a cost effective and flexible solution that suits, rather than fixed longer-term lease arrangements and fixed physical boundaries to their office accommodation. The iCentrum proposition is something that will appeal to start-ups and established companies and will be able to tap into demand from both segments of the market.

Whilst most serviced office providers will maintain statistical data as to occupational levels, the extent to which other statistics such as numbers of enquiries, numbers of workstations per enquiry, etc. is either not collated or held in varying forms, rendering comparisons difficult. Also, this information tends to be treated as commercially sensitive and is not generally made readily available.

Contact has been made with a number of centre managers and an analysis is provided below, together with commentary as to the market position based on these discussions yet supplemented and supported

by evidence provided in the form of statistical data obtained through http://www.officebroker.com which is a specialist web-based serviced office agent.

Within the overall category of serviced offices there are approximately 278 buildings/premises within the West Midlands and supply continues to increase despite the present economic downturn or perhaps even because of the present economic downturn, as the availability of such space is seen as a potential means of encouraging entrepreneurship and the creation of new companies, just as redundancy often provides an impetus to make a new start on one’s own. Also, owners of vacant office accommodation might consider the provision of Serviced Office space an alternative means of achieving a letting or higher occupancy levels, within a building.

Current availability ranges from purpose built publicly owned or supported centres offering new or modern facilities and often aimed at the new/ start-up business, privately owned purpose built centres, sometimes operating/ owned as charities, e.g. Basepoint Centres owned by the ACT Foundation, or prestigious centres such as some of the Regus owned/operated centres but also includes offices of all eras which might have been fully or partially (perhaps on a floor-by-floor basis) converted to serviced office use.

Of the 278 Serviced Office centres in the West Midlands, there are 36 in the immediate Birmingham area.

Figure 7.1 provides some examples of the varied nature of the serviced office accommodation offer in the West Midlands.

Figure 7.1 Example Range of Serviced Office Accommodation Available in West Midlands Business Centre

The following graphs in Figure 7.2 provide an overview of the market throughout the West Midlands over the course of the past four years:

Figure 7.2 Overview of West Midlands Serviced Office Market, 2008/11

ANNUAL AVERAGE STATISTICS 2008 - 2011 GRAPHICALLY REPRESENTED:

NB 2011 Figures based on Year to Date

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AVERAGE COST PER WORKSTATION - WEST MIDLANDS

Over the past 12 months, whilst supply has increased around the West Midlands with new entrants such as Pure Office development at Broadwell Road, Oldbury becoming available, the level of enquiries has actually slightly decreased by around 4%, following the UK trend (3% decrease year-on-year to September 2011). Key points to note include:

• The number of serviced office tenancies entered into over the West Midlands also decreased by around 7% over the year to September 2011 (4% over the UK same period) but the average size of unit entered into increased from 3.8 workspaces per tenancy to 4.3 (4 to 4.6 UK).

• The average cost of a workstation has also increased slightly over the course of the past year and currently stands at around £197 over the West Midlands.

• The average licence term entered into over the year to September 2011 increased from 7.7 months to 8.5 months in the West Midlands (8 months average unchanged in UK).

It is noted that statistics for Birmingham appear to show greater variance than comparative data for the UK. Whilst enquiry levels have fallen by around 28% (Q3 2011 compared to Q3 2010), the number of signed up tenants has increased by around 29%, showing a greater conversion rate of enquiries to lettings. The average number of workstations taken per letting also increased on a Quarterly comparison basis, for the most recent quarter standing at around 8, and no doubt this is at least part of the reason for

the reduced average workstation rental to around £157 over the last full Quarter. The average licence period also reduced in Birmingham (Q3 2011 compared to Q3 2010) from 12 months to 7 months.

It is inevitable that studying any one short period will show greater variations, rather than taking yearly averages and hence it is important to consider the year-to-date data for Birmingham which shows the following headline average figures:

• Enquiry Levels decreased by 19% (West Midlands down by 7%)

• New Tenancy Levels decreased by 11% (West Midlands down by 7%)

• Average No of Workstations per Letting – increased to 6.9 (West Midlands 4.1)

• Average Cost per Workstation reduced to £190 (compared to £178 West Midlands)

• Initial Licence length reduced to 9 months (on a par with West Midlands generally)

The above statistics are all obtained from a single data source (officebroker.com) and it is possible that the greater competition in agents both online and traditional in nature will have affected the data to some extent (e.g. numbers of enquiries) but it is considered that they provide a useful consistent indicator of market conditions subject to verification through direct contact with Centre Managers.

With more centres coming on line and fewer enquiries, serviced offices are becoming ever more competitive and need to offer ever increasing incentives to attract tenants. This normally takes the form of initial rent free periods or rental reductions over a period of time, but can also include free use of meeting rooms or other facilities/services for a particular period of time.

The total amount of serviced office space provided within a ½ mile radius of Birmingham City centre, is estimated to lie in the region of 300,000 ft². From discussions with various centre managers, it appears that occupancy levels tend currently to lie in the region of 75% and hence a hypothetical overall availability of serviced office accommodation is circa. 75,000 ft².

The offer at iCentrum however is not considered standard serviced office space, due to the specialist high tech nature of the accommodation, its location and those occupiers envisaged. More evidence as to the levels of demand might therefore be derived through examination of demand at competing/more comparable centres such as the Custard Factory (including Fazeley Studios), Keele University Science Park and the e-Innovation Centre at Telford. It will be noted that these, centres typically have higher occupancy levels at typically 90-95% but variable due to tenant churn.