It sounds like a cliché, but a reality of our business is that our people are our most valuable asset.

Yeah, you’ve heard that before. Lots of firms say that, but if you think about us as a consultative service-based business, you’ll understand just how true it is. I’ve said many times that everything of value in our company walks out the door every evening at five o’clock. Well, not exactly. If I’m honest it’s generally a lot later than that – but you get the point.

But if our people are our most valuable asset, then a key consideration is making sure they have the tools they need to do world-class innovation work. And it can easily be argued that our most critical tools are the facilities where we work.

With this in mind, we’re thrilled to be only weeks away from moving our Madison staff into its brand-new home in downtown Madison. Our new building is in the heart of Madison’s “East Washington Corridor.” All the cool kids want to move downtown and we’re doing just that. It’s going to be great to join the vibrant and growing community of firms that call downtown Madison home.

We’ll be occupying over 21,000 square feet of the new Lyric building. Our design studio, collaborative team rooms, research rooms, engineering labs and prototyping shop will span three floors including our brand new “treehouse” – a space for our employees to relax and connect that extends out onto a terrace overlooking Madison’s Breese Steven’s field. The shared 11^th floor conference room offers sweeping views of downtown Madison and both of the lakes that make Madison so unique.

Our office features tons of thoughtful touches to support our business – some dramatic, some nuanced, but all intended to allow our great staff to continue to provide inspired innovation and service for our clients in a confidential, fun, fresh and engaging environment. We’re stoked!

For a small company like ours, the decision to move to a new office is a momentous one. In our case, it reflects the realization that we’d outgrown our current facility. While it’s treated us well, it no longer reflects or supports the way in which our teams collaborate and serve our clients. Beyond that, while it’s certainly a big step for our ownership team, moving to a new office is a statement of confidence in our business and a commitment to our employees and our clients. We need to stay a step ahead and our new building is an important part of that.

A remarkable amount of planning, hard work and preparation have gone into the move and I’ve certainly played a vital role. By that I mean I’ve mostly stayed out of the way and let some really talented folks do their thing. Well, that and written some scary checks. But it’s been cool to see our creative team leverage their expertise and use our process to hone this tool into something that’s going to be really special.

Not that we did it on our own by any means. A credit to our firm as a consultant is having the wisdom to know when to bring in professionals and we had some great partners. But we’re fortunate enough to have staff members with great ability to visualize work spaces and solid architectural experience. I think we worked hard to be good “clients” for our partners and actively direct and contribute to the process. The result will be truly remarkable and I couldn’t be prouder – or more excited.

Our business has changed dramatically – and of course will continue to change in ways we won’t always be able to predict. I’m excited that our new office will represent an important part of our commitment to being the best innovation partner for our clients and the best place to work for my friends here at Design Concepts.

We look forward to having you visit and showing off our new home!