Member Article

Award winning business centre delivers to tenants

A South Tyneside business centre which has won several design awards is on course for full capacity after joining forces with a customer-focused design company. The Quadrus Centre in Boldon opened its doors in May last year and proved an instant hit with new and growing businesses, as well as judges in several design awards. Its most recent awards include best building at South Tyneside’s Good Design Awards.

The building, which recently became the first organisation in the North East to be awarded the Customer First certificate, is currently home to around 30 businesses with the capacity to hold 45.

The building’s manager, The Tyneside Economic Development Company (TEDCO), has worked closely with One NorthEast-funded the Design Innovation Education Centre (DIEC) to ensure the needs of its tenants are met.

Doug Scott, Chief Executive of TEDCO, said: “The selection and definition of the services we wanted to provide here proved to be both more demanding and more interesting than we could have imagined. “Through One NorthEast and the Design Innovation Education Centre, we were introduced to the concepts of service design. We’ve now been through the process in three projects and have developed a way of working with consultants LiveWork that we find really powerful.”

DIEC project director Robin Mackie enlisted the help of LiveWork, one of the world’s leading service design companies, which recently announced it was opening an office in Newcastle. He said: “We helped TEDCO identify what they wanted from their tenants, and in turn what their tenants expected from them. “As a result the centre now offers new and growing businesses a friendly and relaxed atmosphere, with topical events and first class, state-of-the-art facilities, where their needs are put first.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .