The John Menzies Edinburgh Park headquarters provides a good example of how best value can be achieved by a holistic design approach.

The focus of the design process was the workplace, rather than any corporate or architectural image. The heart of the design is the column-free floor plate . The requirements for a flexible floor space resulted in a need for a 12m x 7.2m column grid.

The design has been developed by uniting a host of ideas from the design team. These ideas include:

• A fully exposed coffered floor slab, which provides thermal mass to aid cooling and heating of the work . The profile of the coffered floor soffit was further engineered to provide an elliptical profile to avoid acoustic focusing, offer recesses for lighting beams and direct ventilation airflows.
• In addition the raking profile of the exposed structural floor members in cross-section reflects the bending movement profile of the structural member (providing the most economic structural design) and also provides greater daylight penetration to the centre of the floor plate from the perimeter of the building.
• Air conditioning is only required in limited areas due to the low energy, natural ventilation approach used, This results in capital cost savings due to the reduced plant and equipment that will require replacement in future years.
  This Project won an RIBA award in 1997.