Company Estates
A company estate is a landed property of considerable size used by a single company. Typically a company estate will be the headquarters of a (multi)national and resemble (small) business or industrial parks. A company estate may feature just a single building, but more likely it will house different (business) units of the company in multiple buildings scatterred over the site. Some company estates are set up with the specific purpose of resembling a campus – to stimulate interaction and creativity (e.g. Microsoft, Google and Philips).
Business oriented company estates are typically located at the periphery (near suburbs), while industrial oriented estates often diverge to more remote locations (rural areas). In both cases the location choice is made because the land is relatively affordable, there is space to develop the estate and the location strategically coincides with multiple transit modes (with a specific focus on car-accessibility). As a result the estates are faced with similar accessibility issues as business and industrial parks.
The company estates have a high intensity of labor and visitors, requiring good external accessibility – both by car and by public transportation. As the estates are usually not located near existing public transportation nodes, transit solutions will have to be implemented to connect the site. The transit solutions can be extensions of existing modes of transportation or new (automated) transit alternatives (operating on-demand or at a high frequency to ensure changing transportation modes is seamless).
Typically companies will be actively involved in the development of their estates, focusing on the optimal spatial planning to ensure all facilities can be realized within the boundaries of the property. Ample parking should be facilitated, but preferably not at the expense of other amenities. By centralizing parking or interconnecting multiple de-centralized parking facilities, efficiencies of space are created and a pleasant, car-free working environment is ensured.
Automated People Mover Systems are an interesting alternative for these connections. As an additional advantage electronically guided systems can easily be integrated on site.
 |  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||