ELS designs and specifies the fixed joinery for government buildings — service counter halls, council chambers, executive offices and open-plan floors — and ALUMAX manufactures and installs it. The difficulty is that these interiors are used by the public all day, audited on procurement paperwork, and expected to still be serviceable long after the fit-out contractor has left site.
A counter hall runs continuously through public hours: trolley knocks at the plinth, bag scuffs down the front panel, wet hands and umbrellas at the ledge. We specify a hardwearing top with a sealed edge, a skirting in a replaceable material, and counter fronts fixed as demountable panels so one damaged bay is swapped rather than the whole run rebuilt.
Bay pitch, counter height and the depth of the public-side ledge determine how far a queue backs into the hall and whether a wheelchair user is served at the same counter as everyone else. We set the bay module against the clear circulation width and include a lowered bay with clear knee space, rather than treating accessibility as a separate side counter.
Tiered delegate desking and boardroom tables carry gooseneck mics, floor boxes and network drops per seat. Those positions are fixed in the raised floor or slab and cannot be moved afterwards, so the desk setting-out and the M&E point layout have to be reconciled on one drawing before fabrication — including cable routes through the tier risers and access panels for later replacement.
A chamber is a hard room — stone floor, glazing, timber panelling — and speech from the dais arrives at the back rows with reflections behind it. Counter halls have the opposite problem: dozens of simultaneous conversations and no privacy at the transaction line. Fluted and slatted panelling can be built as an acoustic assembly with backing absorption rather than as a solid decorative face, and counter bays can be separated by returns or screens that break the direct path between adjacent transactions.
Government floors still store paper files. A full-height storage wall of loaded files is a real imposed load and needs to be checked against the slab and against the fixing substrate, especially in drywall partitions. In our climate the same cabinets sit against external walls where condensation forms behind them under air-conditioning; we detail ventilated backs and a stand-off from the wall, and specify moisture-resistant board rather than standard chipboard at the base.
A multi-bay counter run whose fronts, ledge height and overhead queue-display panelling have to survive daily public use and stay legible to someone joining the queue at the door.
Curved tiered delegate desking and the raised dais bench, where every seat's mic and power position is fixed before fabrication and the panelling has to work acoustically, not only visually.
A meeting table with cable ports feeding tidy power and data to every seat, backed by a display wall and credenza run that hides the AV rack and keeps it reachable.
An executive desk with return plus a full-height storage and display wall, balancing the formality of a receiving room against real working storage and secure document space.
Workstation clusters, mobile pedestals and window-line bench storage set out so that circulation, file loads and future reconfiguration are all accounted for in the same grid.
ELS holds a design library covering every space above — layouts, material directions and joinery details developed for this sector. It is a commercial asset, so it is not published or downloadable. We take you through the sets relevant to your project, and you keep the ones your brief actually needs.
Send us the floor plans and the department schedule, and we will scope the joinery package and quote it against the measured scope.
Images on this page are concept studies from the ELS design library. They illustrate how these spaces are specified; they are not photographs of completed projects, and they do not represent a fixed product, inclusion or price. Commercial scope is quoted against a measured survey and an approved specification.