If the client has 100,000 square feet currently occupied by desks, it could instead arrange the office so that 50,000 square feet had assigned desks and the other half had unassigned desks. The assigned desks could be used by 100 people rather than 50, eliminating the need for an additional 50,000 square feet of space, Porter said.
One deterrent to the trend, however, is that it can be expensive to reconfigure space, Porter said.
"How do you justify the capital cost to reduce the position of your space?" he asked. "It is tough to justify spending money in a terrible economic environment to save money tomorrow."
But in the end, you save money by leasing space for fewer people. As a result, many clients are trying to time changes in how they use space with lease expirations.
"We are seeing a tremendous uptick in financial services clients looking at this," Beaudoin said. "We are doing a lot of work with a large Canadian bank. Also, a global bank with branches in the United States and United Kingdom is pursuing this."
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