Today, in the presence of Antonio Decaro, mayor of the City of Bari and Alberto Calcagno, managing director of the company, Fastweb opened its new offices at via Adolfo Omodeo n. 49/a. With the opening of the new offices Fastweb continues on the path embarked on some years ago aiming to make the working environments for its employees even more modern and comfortable by means of innovative solutions and the use of technology.
"With the rapid development of digital tools and the spread of mobile working, the way of experiencing the office is changing radically", stated Alberto Calcagno, managing director of Fastweb. "As a result, the working environments must necessarily be redesigned with a modern accent, more comfortable yet functional, in other words, able to respond to new requirements. And this is what we have done here in Bari, with state-of-the-art offices, where we have combined technology and well-being to the benefit of all of our employees".
Located inside the former Hotel Ambasciatori, the new offices occupy the first six floors of the building, covering a total area of around 5,400 m2, bringing together all 450 Bari employees, who, until now, were divided between the Via Aldo Moro and Via Imbriani offices, which have now been returned to the real estate company owners. The presence of customer care to assist families, sales offices to support company and public administration customers and technical departments that deal with the design and development of the infrastructure in the territory in a single branch has also contributed to significantly improving interoperability between the corporate areas.
Fastweb, which has managed all the design, renovation and furnishing of its internal spaces, now has more modern spaces that are more energy efficient and designed to better respond to the new digital needs of the company, thus further strengthening it link with the city and expressing its vocation for research and innovation in relation to workplaces. The very layout of the spaces is the result of codesign, which involved the office employees, who were asked to imagine the new offices and submit their suggestions and contributions.
The internal spaces have therefore been designed moving far beyond the traditional concept of the working environment. Together with the open spaces, created to facilitate collaboration and the exchange of ideas between colleagues, the offices also have quiet areas for concentration. On each floor there are Focus Rooms for individual and team work and Quiet Rooms, panoramic rooms with chaise longues to allow stretching and individual relaxation. Phone Booths have also been created for the employees - separate rooms, especially for telephone conversations and video conferences.
The new Fastweb offices also have work stations designed to stimulate not only the maximum collaboration but also creativity. New types of workstation have been introduced, such as desks equipped with exercise bikes and height-adjustable workstations to make the working day more pleasant. On each floor there are also various break rooms, equipped with kitchenettes, together with real "play areas" with table football available to employees on breaks, as well as showers and changing rooms.
The new offices also have major elements of innovation in terms of plant engineering. The spaces are equipped with a smart LED lighting system, which, by means of special sensors, activates the lights on detecting movement and the presence of people in the office area and in the common areas.
The building is in energy class A, confirming the particular focus of the design on environmental impact. The characteristics of the external structure and the adoption of highly efficient technological systems have also allowed a drastic reduction in energy consumption per unit of floor area. All the environmental parameters of the work areas are managed by a centralised control system.
Furthermore, in order to increase energy efficiency, Fastweb has created its own solar power plant, which covers around 10% of the energy consumed by the offices themselves and contributes to the building's general plant for the power supply of the other floors, for residential use.
Particular attention has been paid to the acoustic design, which drove the choice of materials with an aim to maximise sound insulation of the spaces, limiting the reverberation of noise in the spaces dedicated to customer care, meeting rooms and the relaxation areas.
Following the transfer to the new offices, Fastweb arranged the donation of all the furniture contained in the former offices in Via Aldo Moro and Via Imbriani to various associations in the city that work in welfare, bearing witness to its strong links with the territory. This connection has been made even more significant by the presence of Fastweb, since 2004, in Bari, one of the seven original "fibre-optic cities" selected by the company to create a latest generation ultra-broadband infrastructure.
Today Fastweb offers 1-Gigabit-per-second connections for more than eighty thousand homes, 44% of the total of the city and 100-Megabit-per-second connections for further homes, making up 26% of the total. By the end of 2018,1-Gigabit connections will be available for 70% of Bari homes. Since 2004, Fastweb investments in the city for the development of a landline network of excellence, amount to around thirty million euros. This figure will rise to forty-two million by the end of 2018, owing to the network modernisation work that Fastweb is carrying out with Flash Fiber, the joint venture with TIM.