Ottawa Citizen shares more numbers on the $13.8m tender that LAUFT recently won to create coworking hubs for Canadian government employees in the National Capital Region.

Commenting on the 3-year contract Jullian Paquin, a spokesperson for Public Services and Procurement Canada, said “This is a trial contract to assess whether (third) party provided, full-service workplace solutions will form a part of the future suite of real property accommodation solutions for the Government of Canada”.

Jesse Sharratt of LAUFT workspaces announced the first contract with the Government of Canada to provide upwards of 10,000 government employees with access to space-as-a-service by the end of 2024.

This follows a growing shift from governments dipping their toes, budgets and thousands of employees into coworking and flex spaces.

Jesse Sharratt shares that LAUFT, ClickSpace, Werklab Inc and CoWork Halifax are partnering up to create an 11-space network in Montreal, Greater Toronto, Vancouver and Halifax.

I had questions, so I pinged Jesse. In short: the network is designed to make sure members of each brand can access other spaces as they travel, or have remote work needs. They have an offer called CANADAYPASS where members of all participating brands can redeem $25 day passes across the network. And the underlying agreement is to offer discounted access to members of the other brands.

Jesse Sharratt shares that LAUFT‘s 6th on-demand workspace location on King Street in Toronto just got their news signage installed.

This is definitely an interesting twist on coworking, and I’m curious to watch how/if they’ll land up partnering with more booking interfaces and/or workspace operators as they scale.

Graham Wong shares that LAUFT are introducing a new cancellation policy, in which if a work session is cancelled 4 hours before the start time, the money goes back into the customers’ digital wallet for use on another day.

This is an interesting move, where most spaces require 24 hours notice, or don’t usually provide refunds for same-day cancellations. Keeping the credit on file is a good way to offer flexibility without foregoing already collected revenue.

What kinds of cancellation policies do you offer and why?