Tech scale-up consolidates three sites into one HQ.
Rapid growth had fragmented the organisation across three buildings. Consolidation restored collaboration, culture and decision speed.
The challenge
The scale-up had grown from 120 to 460 fte in three years, spread across three offices within 2 km. Engineering was separated from product; commercial sat in a third building. Culture, speed and cross-functional collaboration, the strength of the early years, were eroding. Investors pushed for operational efficiency ahead of Series D.
Our approach
Speed mattered, but we first spent one week crystallising the workplace strategy: what behaviour must this office enable? Answer: cross-team collaboration, spontaneous engineering-product interaction, and preserving start-up culture at scale-up size. That translated to an activity-based concept with team neighbourhoods, generous informal zones and a central stair as the heart. Location: one building in Houthavens scalable to 700 fte. Design & build was procured as one contract, with engineering leads involved in programming.
The result
Six months after handover, teams reported significantly higher collaboration scores than in the fragmented situation. Time-to-decision for product features halved on internal metrics. New hires integrated demonstrably faster. The scale-up closed Series D, and investors explicitly named the consolidation as an operational milestone.
Key outcomes
“We underestimated how much speed we lost to physical distance. Being in one building again felt like the first startup years, but with 460 people.”
Anonymised client, details adjusted to protect identity.