Qualtrax Downtown Bound

It has been a long road since January when we first announced our move, but we can see the light at the end of the tunnel!

We are in our final weeks and the new home of Qualtrax is taking shape. We had mentioned in an earlier article that we purchased a 1927 Mason’s Lodge in downtown Blacksburg, home of the Hokies! I thought it might be interesting to hear a little about the process we followed to design our space.

A primary goal with the new office is to create better workspace and collaboration space. One of our biggest challenges with an open work environment is the distractions caused when your workspace, play space and meeting area are all the same place. One of our first steps was to take the team in small groups to the new building and talk about the options for the floor plan. This gave all employees the chance to discuss their needs and preferable locations.

We then published several draft floor plans. A real lifesaver was starting a Trello board for the new building. This gave us an easy way to share information out to the team about the building and enable everyone to post their own ideas/questions.

We then took these ideas to an interior designer to find a way to tie it all together. We brought in color, fabric and furniture samples for all to see along the way. A big request from the team was to get new task chairs. We brought in many different models to sit in and try out. Eventually we narrowed our options to two and let everyone pick which chair they would like for their desk.

All throughout our building project, we had a building steering committee of five that met to keep us moving on our timeline and identifying tasks and owners for those to-do’s. During this building experience we’ve interacted with many different vendors.

It has been a good lesson in what is great customer service and the type of service we hope never to let our own customers experience. A shout out to Avis, Shively Electric, Alladin Light Lift and Teresa Ko Commercial Interiors just to name a few that have been great to work with!

As we are wrapping up, some of the final steps of the process have included some time for the team to put their own mark on the building—quite literally. We’ve been doing some fun painting (see pics!) and it has been great to see our team come out, have fun and bring new life into what will soon be our new home.

We feel quite fortunate to be creating a new space for our company to grow in. Some of you reading this blog will hopefully have a chance to see our new building at our 2016 May User Conference!