We moved office again.Yes, this is becoming a running joke.

Three moves in twelve months, one 3D-printed scale model, and what we learned about designing a space for a team that keeps growing.

Scale-printed desks, benches and shelving, shuffled around a printed floor plan until the layout worked.

Yesterday, we moved office. Again.

If that sentence feels familiar, it should, this is the third time we've written this blog.

MOVE ONE

The room with four desks and a dream

Eleven months ago, we took on our first proper office space: one small room, four desks, a meeting table, a 3D printer, and a coffee machine. We wrote a blog about it at the time, because it felt like a big deal, our first go at running the consultancy from a dedicated site.

The idea was simple. A space where the team could share ideas and support each other, bring a project to the table when you needed an extra pair of eyes, a sounding board, or a second opinion on a proposal. What we actually got was better than that. It turned into a proper collaborative unit, tasks splitting naturally across whoever had the right skills for the job, deadlines getting hit that wouldn't have been hit otherwise.

What we also got was a meeting table permanently buried under prototypes and sketches, and a room that quietly ran out of space as new clients started coming through the door. Deadlines got tighter, stress went up, and the lack of space became a genuine problem.

MOVE TWO

The one next door

So in January, we took the office next door. We wrote a blog about that one too, sensing a theme yet?

More space to work. More room to think. Room for more 3D printers and an actual dedicated workbench instead of whatever surface was free. For a few months, it was exactly what we needed.

Then, as new opportunities kept landing and we started planning to grow the team, something felt off. We'd gained space and lost the thing that made the first office work, it started to feel like four engineers working alongside each other rather than a team working together. Turns out two directors and a meeting table in one room doesn't mix well with two engineers trying to concentrate in the other. So we swapped it round: the original room became the meeting room, and everyone moved into the newer space together. Collaboration restored, and as a bonus, a proper dedicated meeting room to grow into.

MOVE THREE

The bit where the landlord saves the day

As more opportunities came in, it became clear we didn't just need another engineer, we needed business support too. And we only had room to add two more people, full stop. Splitting the team across two rooms again wasn't on the table; we'd already learned that lesson the hard way.

We were still chewing over how to solve the layout-and-capacity problem when our landlords came up with a genuinely good solution. Which brings us to yesterday: office move number three.

Before we committed to a final layout, we did what any mechanical design consultancy would do: we 3D printed scale models of the office furniture. Desks, benches, the meeting table, all shrunk down and shuffled around a scale floor plan until the layout actually worked, rather than guessing and hoping it would. It's a nice reminder that the tools we use for clients every day are just as useful when the project is our own office.

Day one in the new room — the printed layout, full size, boxes and all.

WHERE WE'VE LANDED

A room to work as one team

We're now a team of five engineers, with an operations hire joining imminently, in an office that gives us everything we need, for now. There's a proper meeting room, and a private space to talk to clients and plan ahead. There's a room to work collaboratively, as one team, the way we always meant to. And, crucially, there's the space to grow the team when the next opportunity comes knocking.

WHAT WE'VE LEARNED

Twelve months of doing this three times

These office moves have been some of the biggest moments for us over the last year, and they've taught us a lot about how we work best and how we want to build this consultancy from here.

If you're weighing up office space for your own team, my advice is: think further ahead than you think you need to. Desk space is easy to plan for. Collaborative space is what actually makes the work better, and it's much harder to retrofit once you've already signed the lease.

Ask yourself honestly whether the space works for you now, or whether it'll still work in a few years. We went looking for somewhere to work together. What we've ended up with is somewhere to get shit done.