Scientific Laboratory Supplies (SLS)

About SLS Ltd

SLS Ltd (Scientific Laboratory Supplies) are the nation’s leading independent suppliers of high-quality laboratory equipment and chemicals, known for sourcing the best quality brands and products for their clients. SLS also pride themselves on attentive customer service and an extensive online catalogue of products for clients to interact with.

The project

The Arc team came on board to assist with SLS’s next steps as an expanding company. This project involved bespoke design to create a flexible working environment that met their current and future business needs, along with providing furniture solutions.

Arc Business Interiors was chosen from five companies who tendered for the project, selected on the quality of our initial design. The client was occupying a brand new two-storey office situated at Fairham Business Park, a new development which saw SLS become the first tenants.

Our brief

SLS provided our team with an extensive brief, which our design team used to create a design for a flexible working environment, with room for future expansion for their growing business, as well as furniture to fulfil their functional and aesthetic requirements.

Some of the brief’s key requirements included:

• The office layout needed to support a hot-desking system while also providing space and opportunity for staff to come together in other spaces, including privacy booths, meeting rooms and breakout areas.
• Another aim of the new design was to encourage staff to attend the office more often by creating a welcoming and well-tailored space where employees would want to spend time.
• The new office required a capacity of 70 desk spaces. SLS also requested areas where warehouse and office employees could come together to integrate and socialise.
• Each of the directors required their own individual office spaces.
• Implementing effective acoustics techniques was also another key aspect of the design, especially considering that SLS takes a lot of phone calls.

SLS also took time out of their busy diaries to visit a number of furniture showrooms with the Arc team, in Manchester. This really helped to confirm key decisions on the finish and look which had already been presented as a 3D visual.

What we did

Led by Vicky Harrison, we provided all design services and furniture solutions such as new desking, breakout furniture, private work booths, canteen furniture, bespoke reception counter and associate seating, boardroom and meeting room solutions, acoustics and on-desk accessories such as monitor arms and power modules.

The design provided furniture solutions for open-plan offices, canteen and breakout spaces, director offices, meeting rooms, boardroom, collaboration areas, meeting booths, a reception area and a cafe. This supported the needs of both the hot-desking arrangement as well as providing the flexibility of private spaces for meetings, calls and collaborative work.

Visually, Arc designed a modern office space that included pops of colour in the seating areas, along with bespoke walls with science-themed art and quotes to inspire and motivate staff.

The project statistics

The value of the project was £175,000 and spanned 12,090 square feet across two floors for the offices alone.

The handover

SLS are very happy with the final result, with Tony Birtles of SLS saying:

“We are delighted with the result and feel we are well equipped to meet the growing needs of our business now and in the future.”

Overall, we helped them achieve a flexible working space to suit their current and future needs with flexible solutions for hot-desking, along with private offices, meeting spaces, breakout areas and social refreshment areas.