NACM Connect

The challenge

NACM Connect is a trade association for commercial credit professionals, founded in 1973. It had been in the same office for more than twenty years, and in that time the space had not been updated. The organization needed to modernize and to expand at once.

The brief that shaped everything came early, from the CEO. He was planning to retire, and he wanted this office to serve the organization for another twenty years after he left. That single requirement — longevity, in warranty and in aesthetics both — became the filter every later decision passed through.

Interior Design Group completed the architectural plans and handed the project to Applied Ergonomics. From that point Applied Ergonomics owned the rest of it: furniture, finishes, paint, millwork, flooring, light color, plumbing fixtures, down to where the outlets went.

The program was twenty-five private offices, four full-service workstations, a conference room and a huddle area, with height-adjustable desking throughout. Storage was its own problem. NACM works with money, insurance and files, and cannot go fully paperless, so every room had to hold more than a typical office does. And the CEO and CFO were unambiguous about one more thing: no office, at any level, was to feel more elevated than another.

The solution

Applied Ergonomics treated equity as a specification problem rather than a sentiment.

The four workstations were specified to mimic the twenty-five private offices as closely as the format allows: the tallest panels, acoustic treatment, lighting under the storage, the same monitor arms, the same height-adjustable range, the same task seating, the same power. Whatever a private office received, a workstation received. The reasoning was practical — when NACM hires someone into a workstation, that person should never work out that they got the lesser package, because they did not.

Inside the offices, the rooms were not the same size, so the storage strategy flexed to keep the experience level. Larger offices took U-shaped desks with storage on all sides; smaller ones took L-shapes with storage on both sides. The aim was never identical rooms. It was an identical standard of function, privacy and regard across rooms that happen to differ.

Built to order, because the line did not have it

Tayco accounts for roughly 85 to 90 percent of the project. The Canadian manufacturer was chosen on warranty and build quality — they make most of their own product, and their warranties are among the strongest available. For a client who asked for twenty years, that was the entry requirement, not a bonus.

The majority of the twenty-five offices were not catalog product. They were specials, built to order for this project: wardrobes at specific sizes, custom storage components, and height-adjustable desking with shrouds designed to enclose the mechanism so the desk reads as furniture rather than as equipment. They existed because Applied Ergonomics asked for them. Tayco is expected to add the pieces to its standard line in 2026.

A chair that does not need a tutorial

Humanscale was specified for monitor arms and task seating throughout. The manufacturer is known for sustainability and ergonomics, but the deciding factor here was narrower than that: the adjustment is close to automatic.

Roughly two percent of people know how to properly adjust a task chair. Humanscale builds seating that responds to the sitter’s height, weight and frame with very few levers to find or understand. Over twenty years, through turnover and through every body that will sit in these rooms, a chair that adjusts itself is a longevity decision as much as an ergonomic one.

The conference room and the huddle area

Conference seating is the Cosgrove from JSI — a chair that holds up from any angle in a room where people sit for a long time, and one of the better conference chairs available. The huddle area takes four stools from 9to5 Seating, a small specification for a space meant for short, unscheduled conversations.

Nine days on site

Applied Ergonomics was present for the entire installation: nine days, roughly ten hours a day. It began before a box was opened, with a walk of every office and the full floor plan, then inventory, labeling and parts checks as WallTech unboxed. The work was done alongside the installers rather than reviewed afterwards, so that every piece landed in the right room with the right components the first time.

The reason is economic rather than sentimental. Being there from the first box is what prevents the punch list, the return trips and the corrections that cost money later. Most people in a project lead role do not attend an installation this way.

The result

NACM Connect moved into a headquarters where the CEO, the CFO and a new hire at a workstation sit at the same quality of desk, in the same seating, with the same adjustability — in a building specified to still be working when the people who commissioned it have retired.

Specified on this project