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A Hub for Innovation and Collaboration:
EMC’s New West Coast Campus
Designed and constructed in less than 12 months, the SMMA-designed 350,000 SF Mission Corporate Center for EMC in Santa Clara CA consolidates the activities of multiple newly acquired technology companies in an environment that appeals to relocated employees.
In 2004, Massachusetts-based EMC Corporation announced a series of West Coast purchases. The Silicon Valley acquisitions were made to broaden EMC’s value to customers by expanding the company’s R&D, software, and service capabilities.
According to Paul Fitzgerald, EMC’s Director of Facilities Services, the big idea from the start was to bring the acquired companies together and provide employees with a stimulating, best-in-class corporate campus to foster innovation and collaboration.
To accomplish this, EMC needed a partner with a talented team that could think creatively, work with challenging time and budget constraints, and bring thought leadership to the project.
Based on their trusted relationship since 1998, EMC selected Symmes Maini & McKee as their partner!
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The companies EMC acquired each boasted a deeply-rooted corporate culture. The challenge for SMMA’s architects, engineers and interior designers was to create an environment that fostered the integration of these cultures – identifying their unique attributes and celebrating their commonalities – to give each employee a sense of belonging.
The effort of consolidating nine northern California work sites into new locations had to be completed within an aggressive 12-month schedule, because leases were ending in many of the existing locations. Controlling cost was another challenge. Budgets relied on historic relocation and tenant build-out benchmarks, metrics that would prove to be impractical in this situation. |
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EMC and SMMA formed a rapid response team of real estate, design, and construction professionals to plan and design a new corporate campus for the hundreds of new EMC employees.
The teams had three absolute priorities:
First, to design a space that consolidated various high technology disciplines into one cross-functional space while simultaneously expressing and replicating the things that made these companies valuable acquisitions.
Second, to engineer a fast-paced yet attainable phased relocation plan for the incoming employees. Rapid move implementation would require that design and construction activities be extremely well organized to reassure new employees and settle them into their new corporate home.
Third, to ensure that new employees understood and appreciated that EMC cared about them, respected their knowledge and skills, and intended to integrate them fully into EMC’s world class environment.
To do this, the team set in motion a unique methodology that accelerated the schedule and reduced exposure on cost, time, and disruption.
The team gave all participants the green light to seize any opportunity to reduce the schedule and provide innovative design solutions to control cost without compromising performance.
A few of the solutions were: maintaining strategically placed rooms along the building spine, creating common floorplates with repeatable EMC standards, reusing existing lighting and building system components, devising parallel construction methods to accelerate the campus build-out, and utilizing local sub-consultants to shorten the learning curve. |
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The new Santa Clara site includes a conference facility and executive briefing center for customer training and sales demonstrations, and outdoor amenity areas. EMC’s Paul Fitzgerald reports that the campus “received rave reviews from each successive wave of relocated employees.”
Less than six months from the start of design, EMC hosted an Open House just after employees had moved into the first phase of the completed space. The event provided the team its first test of employee satisfaction.
Not only did a high percentage of employees attend the Open House, many included their families for a tour of the new workspace. The Open House quickly transformed into a celebration for EMC and its new acquisitions.
The Santa Clara facility is a high-traffic, high-energy hub for EMC’s West Coast operations. And with its opening, EMC’s vision for this facility was achieved. |
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