New federal government office leases in Canberra encourage flexible work for public servants

The safety regulator's 500 Canberra staff are currently housed in Woden but will move to three levels at 18 Marcus Clarke Street in Civic at the end of the year.

Their current lease at 18 Furzer Street is due to expire in January 2024.

The new office will not have capacity for all of the authority's staff, with the fit-out designed to encourage "an agile flexible seating model".

"The final fit-out has been designed on an agile flexible seating model with few assigned seats," a Civil Aviation Safety Authority spokesperson said.

"It will seat 353 staff at any one time and represents a saving of 1616 square metres of office space."

This could be an emerging trend for government agencies looking to cut costs, with the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations planning to downsize by 20,000 square metres when it moves to a new building in 2026.

The 11-storey Marcus Clarke Street building, as well as 7 London Circuit, were occupied by the Department of Agriculture until February 2023, when the department moved into the Civic Quarter 2 building on Northbourne Avenue.

ISPT is refurbishing both 18 Marcus Clarke Street and 7 London Circuit, connecting the ground floors of each building, with works to include installing a "wellness centre" in the five-storey London Circuit building, as well as end-of-trip facilities.

A further two floors in the Marcus Clarke Street building are under offer to another government tenant, but discussions are still underway to lease the rest of the space, regional investment manager for ISPT Zoe Ferrari said.

"We're having discussions with a mix of groups, both private and government," she said.

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Leasing out older office spaces can be difficult, Ms Ferrari said, with plenty of new stock to compete against.

"I think we are facing some challenges moving forward in some of the secondary grade assets in Canberra, because there is a significant amount of investment that's required across secondary-grade assets to be able to then compete with the newer stock that's coming through," she said.

"Government is still very much focused on the value-for-money proposition.

"So it's not to say that there's not a market, or there's not demand, for secondary but I do think that the push for amenity and also stronger Environmental, Social and Governance and sustainability credentials do tend to be quite a bit easier to find in the newer grade stock."

The aviation authority has approached the market to supply and install workstations, furniture, lockers, chairs and audio visual equipment by November.

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