Watch our video case study – full transcript can be found below

We are so excited to take you inside Sphere Fluidics’ new office and lab space.

Sphere Fluidics is a ground-breaking organisation working in the development and commercialisation of single-cell analysis technology for biopharmaceutical discovery.

Having worked with the client in what is referred to as ‘Phase One’ at Granta Centre which is a statement building on Granta Park, the company’s growth and expansion continues with Phase Two.

Transcript

Rob Treanor, Vice President of Operations, Sphere Fluidics

Just to introduce Sphere Fluidics a little bit: we’re a life sciences provider and we allow our customers to find and isolate rare and valuable cells. That’s really interesting in the context of the pharmaceutical and drug discovery landscape because it replaces techniques that, previously, were arduous and costly.

Greta Miceviciute, Interior Designer, COEL

The brief for Sphere Fluidics was to create a space where they brought their office and laboratory workers from around Cambridge under one roof. They emphasised a lot on their corporate branding, wellbeing of staff – they wanted to create a space that is flexible for working from home / hybrid office, but also for people to kind of come in under one roof and for everyone to enjoy the space.

Dean Powell, Group MEP Director, COEL

One of the things I really enjoyed about working on this project was the early engagement with the client and the stakeholders from Sphere Fluidics. We worked really hard at the pre-construction phase to ensure that the design was fully coordinated and went to site with no problems.

Rob Treanor, Vice President of Operations, Sphere Fluidics

Now, would I recommend COEL as a partner in the future? I absolutely would. We worked with COEL for two phases of this project. Ultimately why did we decide to partner with COEL? There was a lot of trust built up in the first phase – we saw the execution of that project run exactly to time and delivered a very high quality of product.

Claire Cox, Global Head of Marketing, Sphere Fluidics

I have to say this got put into motion before I joined the company and a lot about the brief and the vision for the space is why I joined the company. The actual ambition of trying to take what our outside look was then, which was very much product-focused, clinical, blue, traditional life science, into something with a personality that really reflected what we were like internally was really important – and that is what I was trying to achieve once I came on board.

Rob Treanor, Vice President of Operations, Sphere Fluidics

In our facilities strategy over the last few years, we’ve really been looking for a building that allowed us to consolidate our disparate sites. For a long time, we were looking for a building to bring our whole team together in one place, and we very much saw that being in Cambridge. I’m really pleased with what it gives us, in terms of its capabilities and the other options that our staff have.

Greta Miceviciute, Interior Designer, COEL

When designing and creating a lab and office space for a client, laboratories do tend to take priority, and you need to make sure that the footprint and the square meterage is right for each lab and the activities within it. It’s really important to get all the information from the users and make sure that the equipment fits, that they have enough workspace and circulation space and all of the M&E requirements to be taken note of.

Claire Cox, Global Head of Marketing, Sphere Fluidics

The reason I think the lab space is so important is that part of what we’re trying to achieve is to innovate and create the future, and we really can’t do that without the highest type possible labs. So for us, what we’re doing is getting the R&D teams the best possible space; whether that be for engineering, chemistry or the biologists to really progress and help meet the needs of our customers.

Dean Powell, Group MEP Director, COEL

It’s really important to understand the client’s science within the laboratories to ascertain which gases and which services we need to bring into he building. This can be a particular challenge around existing premises where they may not be set up as laboratories in the first instance.

Claire Cox, Global Head of Marketing, Sphere Fluidics

The decision to make the labs different colours was actually prompted by Greta when she said “you’ve got all this lovely new branding and your new colours why don’t you think about bringing that into the lab space.” We thought it was a great opportunity to bring the branding into different spaces, but also allow the lab guys to have their personality shine through.

Josh Steward, Application Development Scientist, Sphere Fluidics

The different colours in the labs will definitely help different teams within the company: we have engineering, biology, chemistry, production and QC, so having the labs as different colours will help make it more personal for them and make it easier to work – because we spend a lot of the time in the lab.

Greta Miceviciute, Interior Designer, COEL

Sphere Fluidics are so lucky to be surrounded by such lovely nature outside, that it was so important to bring the elements of biophilic design into the scheme. So we wanted to use a lot of foliage, we wanted to make sure that we evoked this welcoming feeling that you get when you’re in nature: it relaxes you, it kind of brings that calmness.

Claire Cox, Global Head of Marketing, Sphere Fluidics

For me, I have to say, I’m a hybrid worker so it’s actually made such a huge difference to have the hot desking space where I can come in, as well as having lockers, so I have some form of permanent home for my belongings.

Josh Steward, Application Development Scientist, Sphere Fluidics

My overall opinion of the whole of Phase One and Phase Two being done is; it’s nice, because it kind of brings us all together. So not only is the building just one, now we’re all working together, we can talk together and not have to do it through Teams as much. We can go into a booth or go into the kitchen and have a more relaxed setting.

Rob Treanor, Vice President of Operations, Sphere Fluidics

The greatest fear on day one is that the building won’t work for some reason. The feedback that I think we had on that day – and this will sound really mundane – but someone senior said to me: “It’s great, everything works”. And I think the staff internally have just really appreciated the high quality design and those options that the building gives us in terms of collaboration spaces, future flexible spaces. So we’ve designed in lab expansion areas; we’ve put in elements in the building that will allow us to use it very differently in the future. And again, we could just see on the plans and the look & feel documents, the design that was proposed and we really shared that ambition for what the building could become.