IT Offices

[plumyeti]

Hi all,

 

We are currnently considering reburbishing/re-organising our office.

 

I have been told that we are very lucky for the size of our office.

 

How is you office laid out, photos greatly appreciated?

 

What are some nesceceries and nice to haves for an IT office?

[6Foot2]

Hopefully not like my office. My boss decided to camp in my office from time to time (to avoid certain members of staff, apparently)

 

When this became a trend, I decided to discourage the visits by not tidying away things that I had been working on. By the time I left (2½ years ago) there was quite a pile of laptop and desktop carcasses. There was other general untidiness too (correspondence, documentation, etc)

 

I have told that the piles were still there before Christmas last year.

[Bedders]

The fish tank I have is a lovely touch. The fish don't judge me when I use them for Rubber Duck Debugging, but I have to remember to clean them weekly.

[jthompson]

Necessities (at least for me):

Stacking storage boxes for quickly grabbing cables, etc.

Some reacking or heavy duty shelving.

 

Nice to have:

An ornamental Rubik's cube or other fiddly toy.

A plant.

[DalekSec]

When i started i had a single desk in a very packed small office, i was then moved to a slightly big desk in a bigger office. I made a point of constantly using way more space than my desk. Hired a tech still in that office, made sure to use more space...

 

We now have our own 2 desk office in a cabin which is about 6m x 4m which isn't enough space but there is a shortage of space here!

[Iain.Faulkner]

We're fairly lucky in both the schools where we have an office. One is a new build school with a small ish office (just enough room for three people with a desk each and then a bench for working on), with separate store room and access to the server room as well. The other school we have an old IT Suite, so there's benching right round the room, loads of data and power. We then have a second old IT suite as a storeroom. It does mean that we store far more old equipment/clutter than we should do though. Would love to get some stacking boxes to give the place a proper sort out, it's such a mess at the moment.

 

For me the essentials are lots of power and data available and a window that looks outside!

[TechMonkey]

We are very lucky in that we have a fair space, with enough benching (though enough is never enough!).

So rectangular office with desks coming off a short side out almost the length of the room.

What we don't have is decent network connections or power so we are working with Estates to refurb and put a partition in-between the desks where we can mount trunking for power and data. We modelled a lot of options, but unfortunately the layout of the room precluded anything else really.

Other important features are:

- some big racking to store the odds and ends we have

- sink/kettle/coffee machine

- guard dog on top of racking that barks as people enter.

- monitoring screen to let us know when things are up

- non desk benching along sides of room to allow fiddling/fixing/ignoring hardware.

 

Future blue sky plan is a to get a mezzanine in. We need a meeting area for less public discussions, plus our ceilings are so stupidly high it makes sense to claim the space. (Never going to happen but I can dream)

Edited January 31, 2024 by TechMonkey

[Aprice]

We have possibly the worst office going. Probably 3m wide by 5m long. No ventilation or windows, by this afternoon it will be 25C in here, On the really hot days I just move to the server room to work.

 

Just space for our desks and a short run of benching at the back, half of which the CCTV PC takes up.

 

Unfortunately that is one of the downsides of outsourced IT, there's little incentive to spend money improving it. The schools only a few years old but just doesn't seem to have been built big enough.

 

A4 paper boxes for storage, as they were free!

Edited January 31, 2024 by Aprice

[Olliedawg]

We have possibly the worst office going. Probably 3m wide by 5m long. No ventilation or windows, by this afternoon it will be 25C in here, On the really hot days I just move to the server room to work.

 

Just space for our desks and a short run of benching at the back, half of which the CCTV PC takes up.

 

Unfortunately that is one of the downsides of outsourced IT, there's little incentive to spend money improving it. The schools only a few years old but just doesn't seem to have been built big enough.

 

A4 paper boxes for storage, as they were free!

 

Sounds similar to mine!

 

Enough room for my desk, a workbench and 2 filing cabinets. Would have been nice to have a window!

 

 

Also note the portable heater, as my radiator doesn't work - and hasn't done for the past 2 months

[midweek]

Would have been nice to have a window!

 

Careful what you wish for. My office has horrible frosted plastic windows that the kids regularly rattle footballs off. Near heart attack inducing every time.

[jnfarmer]

- monitoring screen to let us know when things are up

 

I prefer to know when things go down... Do you let out an excited squeal when part of your network wakes up and comes online?

[TechMonkey]

I prefer to know when things go down... Do you let out an excited squeal when part of your network wakes up and comes online?

Find it simpler to keep everything off. Less support calls. When someone accidentally turns it on we need to know to turn it all off again.

[dhicks]

What are some nesceceries and nice to haves for an IT office?

 

Probably best to plan for flexibility rather than for a fixed design - whatever requirement you have now will change in a couple of years time. It can be handy to have storage space in your office, but don't go over the top - there's a temptation for your "office" to turn in to a storage cupboard. We get on quite nicely with standard Gratnells tray storage furniture handily available from school suppliers, and the trays are interchangeable with classroom ones. We get the clear plastic versions with lids so we can easily see what's inside. Space for a decent-sized monitor is always a good idea (our boss has a 42" 4K monitor, which I would find a little too large), and desk / bench space for another PC / monitor to be worked on. Depending on your setup, we're finding our on-site server requirement is getting fairly minimal, sooner or later we'll be able to fit everything in a decent-sized network cabinet and not bother with a separate server rack / cupboard.

[CHiLL]

For organisation, we bought ourselves a couple of these Gratnells shelving units and trays, so we can organise our cables and other regularly used items:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]70754[/ATTACH]

Our office is very small, so storage and organisation became a priority. We keep a small selection of larger items, like monitors, projectors, laptops, desktops, etc, for quick access if we need any. The rest of the larger or infrequently used items live in our storage room, on the other side of the building. Because power sockets were limited, I pulled out a couple of 10-gang extension leads from an old iPad/laptop trolley that was being disposed of and screwed them into the wall by my desk for easy access (I just have to be conscious about the amount of power I'm drawing through the one wall socket it's plugged in to).

[Chuckster]

Sounds similar to mine!

 

Enough room for my desk, a workbench and 2 filing cabinets. Would have been nice to have a window!

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]70751[/ATTACH]

 

Also note the portable heater, as my radiator doesn't work - and hasn't done for the past 2 months

 

 

Looks more like a prison cell than it does an office, with walls looking like that!

[Davit2005]

Shelves and a good number of network and electrical outlets. A white board is also handy. Bench space, monitors on wall mounts for testing and building/repairing PCs

[Jaan]

Here's ours, i'm very happy with it. Has made sooooooo much difference to our ( team of 3 ) mental health!

 

We were very lucky, the old "office" was needed as part of creating a new classroom.......

 

.....We had a new office built for us as part of the movement deal..... dedicated office area and work area.

 

 

I'd take pics but we're having alittle ceil work done at the moment (led lighting) and somebody is reviewing CCTV

[DalekSec]

Photo Booth? Doubling up as a Boots?

[DalekSec]

Quick layout of ours:

 

2 desks and storage with workspace on top for building / 3d printing / test server / mac mini

 

[Jaan]

Photo Booth? Doubling up as a Boots?

 

Lol its for the ID cards..... just a chair against a grey background (pin board) it's not event in that location anymore as we a a "metal wardrobe" there!

[speakercon]

Surely the refreshment facilities are the number one priority.

[Rob_D]

This is our Network Manager and Technician offices. They were originally supposed to be the other way around, but while the (now) manager office is slightly bigger and has more storage, the tech office had more usable desk space, and seemed better suited to 3 people.

I'd love to be able to set up either office so everyone didn't have their backs to the door, but all the "desks" are fixed benching so it's not really on the cards even if I could find a layout didn't involve "bunkbed desks".

 

And for a what not to do, this was the "IT Office" in my first school. It's a converted shower cubicle.

[6Foot2]

Surely the refreshment facilities are the number one priority.

 

After I left, my former colleague was told to remove the kettle and fridge from the office because they presented a "health and safety risk"

 

[howartp]

Surely the refreshment facilities are the number one priority.

We had our coffee machine confiscated several years ago.

 

Fortunately they moved the staffroom from 3-classrooms-away-down-a-corridor to right-next-door so we have ready easy access to refreshments including "help yourself" foods that appear from time to time.

[Rob_D]

After I left, my former colleague was told to remove the kettle and fridge from the office because they presented a "health and safety risk"

 

We banned most of the kettles some years ago because when everyone put them on at the same time at the start of break it would trip the main breaker for the building. We did get to keep the fridge until we moved into the new build (But I don't remember there being anything other than old thermal paste in there).

 

Back on topic.

Most IT offices these days have some sort of monitoring screen on the wall. Ours just pings servers/switches and flashes if something goes offline, but I've seen some with loads of extra features on other threads.

Also a test-bench/rebuilding station. One of the techs recently found a monitor with all the different display port types so we've nicked that for the test bench, otherwise keeping adapters on hand is useful.