PENN1 Lessons Learned

A new office. Purpose-built for the world of hybrid work.

Lessons learned from the PENN1 retrofit

Today, enterprises worldwide are re-thinking the future of on-site work and collaboration. At PENN1, Cisco is showing the way.

Scroll down for a 5-minute overview. Or take 20 minutes to dive deeper in each section.

Introduction

PENN1 is Cisco’s office in New York City. Prior to COVID-19, it was a traditional office with modest utilization. Now, after a two-year transformation, it is one of the most vibrant, energizing spaces in the company’s portfolio and a showcase of smart building technology.

We learned a lot along the way. As a result, PENN1 today is not just a model for a high-tech, hybrid workplace. It’s a model for how to make that happen—a 59,000-square-foot instruction manual for how to succeed at transitioning your own office to sustainable, smarter, hybrid workspaces.

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Read the back story

1. Define the objectives

To accomplish our goal of transforming PENN1 into a smart building for hybrid work, we first established five key objectives.

Make it hybrid: Create an office that fosters collaboration among people who might be there always, often, sometimes, or not at all.
Promote wellness: Build health and fitness into the design.
Embrace sustainability: Accelerate Cisco’s journey to net zero.
Digitize real estate: Make the building programmable, smart, always on, and always efficient.
Be the vision: Create a building that is itself a visionary platform for tomorrow’s offices.

Deeper dive

Read about the objectives

2. Assemble the partners and the technology

A modern retrofit requires a range of skills. From architectural design to construction management to smart building expertise—and more. Technologies we excel at, and technologies we depend on others to provide. That’s why one of the most crucial requirements for success, at every stage of the retrofit process, was finding the right partners to team with.

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Learn about the partners and technologies

3. Establish a design approach

We didn’t start from scratch. We had to ask how the existing office—designed for the workflows of just a few years ago—could be converted to meet new workflows. So, we asked our existing stakeholders—human resources, workplace resources, IT, customer experience—how they understood their own goals and pain points. We also leveraged usage data from our wireless network and collaboration endpoints.

Our biggest insight: most of the collaboration that happens in the office will include one, or two, or many collaborators who are not there. So, we needed to do more than accept that reality—we needed to find a way to thrive off of it.

Deeper dive

Explore the design approach

4. Reinvent the workspaces and the building

The new PENN1 would need a range of spaces to match all the new ways our workers do their best work. Hot desks. Huddle rooms. A variety of collaboration spaces, with the right layouts and the right screens to make everyone attending feel like they’re right there—whether they’re in the room or a thousand miles away.

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See the workspaces

Hot desks

Innovation suite

Quiet room

Large collaboration room

5. Optimize for experience and wellness

The pandemic changed all of our employees’ standards for workplace health and experience. But our ability to design buildings that meet those standards is growing exponentially. The connected office at PENN1 generates continuous data about environmental metrics—congestion, temperature, air quality, lighting—that can help employees choose the space that’s most comfortable for them. And a healthier workplace is a more productive one.

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Learn how we did it

97%

of employees want their company to implement changes to make the workplace safer.

6. Optimize for comfort, energy efficiency, and sustainability

PENN1 integrated multiple building control systems—power, HVAC, lighting, shades, and occupancy—over a single unified POE network. The result? Simplified management. Better visibility. LEED Silver certification. And a major reduction in energy consumption.

Deeper dive

Read about our sustainability approach

7. Achievements and lessons learned

The results of the PENN1 renovation were extraordinary. An office where more people now get more accomplished, in more ways, in less space. But along the way, we ran into challenges, which is to be expected. Recognizing the challenges, and tackling them head on, is itself a crucial ingredient to success for any office renovation.

Deeper dive

Survey the top findings