Kit of Parts

The Kit of Parts is where demand evidence becomes designable objects: the setting system the workplace will consist of. Each setting type — focus, individual, team, collaboration, meeting, learning, social, hospitality, wellbeing, support, technology-enabled, specialist — is defined by the activity it serves, the quantity the evidence supports, the environmental and accessibility requirements it must meet, and the behaviour it assumes. A kit derived from evidence produces a workplace where settings earn their footprint; a kit assembled from showroom typologies produces the avoided spaces the next Occupancy Assessment will find.

• In Develop, once the concept is confirmed, ratios are set and the stack is decided
• As the direct predecessor of Architectural Guidance, which specifies the kit's environmental delivery
• Re-specified in Recalibrate when setting-level performance evidence demands it

• Strategist and design team co-developing the kit
• Community group testing settings against real work
• Accessibility and inclusion specialists reviewing every setting type — not a separate accessibility annex
• IT for technology-enabled settings; FM for operability and support spaces

• Activity profile and cluster-to-setting matrix
• Confirmed concept and its ecosystem logic
• Setting quantities implied by ratios and the stack
• Aggregate sensory, focus and accessibility requirements from the Workplace Passport and Dynamics
• Behavioural signatures from the Occupancy Assessment: which setting types were avoided, overloaded or hoarded — and why, per Targeted Insights
• Environmental performance requirements per activity type

1. Derive the setting catalogue from the activity profile: each activity family (concentrated individual work, confidential calls, team coordination, scheduled and unscheduled collaboration, learning, social connection, hospitality, restoration) maps to setting types with defined purposes.
2. Quantify per setting type from the evidence: cluster distribution, measured activity proportions and rhythm — not from typology ratios in a furniture catalogue.
3. Specify each setting's requirement profile: acoustic class, enclosure, visual privacy, lighting, thermal and air-quality needs, technology fit, accessibility — with sensory-sensitivity and accessibility requirements from the aggregate Passport evidence built into the base specification, not retrofitted.
4. Attach the behavioural logic per setting: what norms it assumes (bookable or drop-in, quiet protocol, duration expectations), because a setting without its norm is half-designed. Route each assumed norm to the change workstream.
5. Incorporate the diagnostic lessons: settings the current workplace evidenced as avoided are redesigned against their diagnosed failure cause, not reproduced with new finishes.
6. Include the unglamorous system: support spaces, storage, print, cleaning, first aid, lockers, arrival — the settings whose absence degrades everything else.
7. Validate the full kit against the demand clusters and with the community group: can each cluster assemble its working day from these settings without friction?
8. Document the kit with quantities, requirement profiles, behavioural assumptions and evidence chains.

• Catalogue seduction: setting types imported because they photograph well, with no activity evidence behind them
• The focus deficit repeating: collaboration settings over-specified and enclosure under-specified against the measured activity profile — the most common kit failure
• Accessibility and sensory requirements handled as a compliance annex instead of base specification
• Settings without norms: the quiet zone with no quiet protocol, the drop-in room that becomes a squatted office
• Wellbeing settings as gesture: a single wellness room serving 2,000 people is a press release, not provision

• Complete setting catalogue with purpose, quantity and evidence chain per type
• Requirement profile per setting: acoustic, enclosure, lighting, thermal, air, technology, accessibility
• Behavioural assumption register per setting, routed to change
• Cluster validation record
• Support and specialist space schedule

The kit is the core content of Architectural Guidance and the Architectural Guide Notes: the design team receives settings with requirement profiles, not mood boards. Quantities feed the programme of requirements' final form. Behavioural assumptions structure the activation work in Deliver. In Recalibrate, the Spatial Performance Review measures each setting type against its stated purpose — the kit's evidence chains are what make that review decidable.

Evidence sets quantities and requirements; design judgement gives settings their quality — the difference between a focus room that meets acoustic class and one people seek out. Judging which diagnosed failures were the setting's fault versus the norm's, and how much setting variety the organisation can operate before choice becomes friction, requires expertise the data structures but does not contain.

• Assembling the kit from precedent projects instead of this organisation's activity evidence
• Quantifying collaboration generously and focus optimistically against the measured proportions
• Specifying settings without their behavioural norms
• Treating accessibility as a percentage of settings rather than a property of the system
• Omitting support spaces until the design team discovers there is nowhere for the lockers

A government agency's kit development confronted its diagnostic inheritance: the existing quiet floor was avoided (Targeted Insights: acoustic failure plus social norms) and 28% of Passport participants reported acoustic sensitivity. The new kit specified enclosed focus settings at 2.5 times the previous provision, acoustic class raised one grade above standard, distributed across neighbourhoods rather than segregated on one floor — with a quiet protocol co-developed by the community group. Twelve months post-occupancy, the Spatial Performance Review recorded focus settings as the highest-rated setting type in the building.