FDM4 Ltd.: working in comfort.

• Author: Ross, Ian
• Position: BEST PLACES TO WORK - Company overview

John Cutsey is a fully engaged boss in any endeavor he takes on.

Small wonder then that when the president of FDM4 International wanted to construct a. North Bay corporate headquarters for his software company in the late 1990s, he was very instrumental and very hands-on with the design.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

His one-story glass building on Airport Road is the kind of building most cubicle dwellers can only dream of.

Working with designers Trevor Bywater and Paul Mitchell of Mitchell Architects, Cutsey said he knew exactly what he wanted in a work environment, right down to the cosmetic touches and customized pieces of glass.

Construction on the 10,000-square-foot building began in 1998 and was completed in January 1999, Cutsey admits it probably cost him a "small fortune" in personally overseeing all the work.

Cutsey wanted to bring the outdoors, indoors.

He wanted his designers to make sure there was outside light for every office throughout the building.

"I wanted depth perception, so when one is sitting at one's desk and looking a (computer) terminal, their eyes get outside light."

You won't find desks jammed into every nook and cranny with employees facing a cubicle or physical wall to save space.

"That's the wrong way for your people to do work."

All the 43 employees in his North Bay office have outside light streaming into their workspace. Aside from his service department, each individual has their own office.

Most every desk and computer terminal faces out the door and through glass panels into perimetre corridors which run the length of both sides of the building. Beyond that are 12-foot floor-to-ceiling thermopane glass panels where employees can "look beyond" onto the manicured grounds where the occasional deer darts by.

Cutsey even wanted the floor base heaters recessed into the floor so employees won't get cheated in the view.

In the centre of the building, there is a skylight that brings in natural light for seven inside offices.

Why so particular? It's all about getting maximum productivity from his employees.

"I want it to be the perfect environment for them. We write computer programs and they've got to be the best. We have to have structure, we have to have a format, that's extremely important.

"The perfect way is the way we did it."

To ward off 3 p.m. doziness, 10 air-handling units were installed to exchange the air 40 times an hour. "The air handling is extremely important."

Cutsey also added large humidity control...