Beyond alternative officing: Infrastructure on‐demand

Abstract

Over the last ten years interest in and implementation of different forms of alternative officing (AO) have increased dramatically. AO has, in fact, become simply another tool in the real estate and FM space planning and design toolkit. This paper briefly describes different types of AO, and then suggests that AO, which has primarily responded to corporate drives to reduce costs, should broaden its focus to explore alternative ways of constructing and procuring space in response to a different organisational change: namely, to be able to occupy space on‐demand. The article describes the concept of a lean portfolio that helps organisations manage uncertainty better through infrastructure on‐demand; and proposes a research agenda for systematically examining different alternative workplace strategies (AWS).