Exclusive: Baker Hughes to move corporate HQ to Houston’s Energy Corridor

About 20 percent of Bakers Hughes Houston-based workforce will be affected by the relocation, or roughly 1,400 employees, said Deanna Jones, chief human resources officer for Baker Hughes, in an interview. All told the consolidation will result in Baker Hughes shedding about a net 346,000 square-feet of office space.

“We are always looking for the ability to create efficiency and cost effectiveness in our real estate footprint,” Jones said. “This is going to be a cost reduction for us to be able to consolidate these offices.”

The move consolidates multiple Baker Hughes corporate offices into one location where the company can invest in building out collaborative workspaces that reflect its hybrid workplace strategy, Jones said.

“Like a lot of other organizations, we’ve been looking for ways to create a work environment for our people that is modern, flexible and innovative,” Jones said. “We all know the talent marketplace right now is very active and the Energy Corridor has a number of services and amenities in that area that just make it a really great place to office.”

With the concentration of oil and gas companies in the corridor, the move will place Baker Hughes closer to many of its clients, Jones added. Baker Hughes,which is seeking to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, also was drawn to Energy Center II because it is an energy efficient building, Jones said.

Allowing part-time work-from-home schedules also allows Baker Hughes to move closer to its goals of achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 by reducing on-site energy usage and cutting commute times, Jones said.

The new office design will embrace that hybrid model with collaborative work spaces to foster connections when employees are on site, Jones said. (Other energy firms such as Shell and Chevron have taken similar approaches to their post-pandemic office spaces.)

“The hybrid environment that people have come to work in over the pandemic years really is allowing us to think differently about the workspaces we have in our office environment,” Jones said.

Baker Hughes will vacate four other buildings across the city: a 168,000 square-foot office at 17021 Aldine Westfield Road (its headquarters) and about 96,000 square feet at an nearby office building at 17015 Aldine Westfield, both of which it owns. The buildings will be put on the market for lease or sale, Baker Hughes said. The firm also will vacate about 212,000 square feet of leased office space spread across two Spring Branch-area buildings at 11150 Equity Drive and 4425 Westway Park Blvd.

Since 2020, Baker Hughes has cut in half its Houston office footprint, when including the consolidation from this latest move, Jones added.

Baker Hughes is the latest Houston heavyweight to reduce its office footprint this year following space reductions by companies like Enbridge, Bechtel and Baker Botts. About half of companies surveyed by the commercial real estate firm CBRE earlier this year said they plan to reduce office space over the next three years. About 84 percent said they don’t need as much space because of remote working arrangements, according to a 2022 national survey.

Although Houston’s office market remains chronically saddled with too much office space, the market is starting to claw its way back from the pandemic. The Houston office market recorded 2.8 million square feet of new leasing activity during the second quarter of 2022, bringing the year-to-date total to 5.3 million square feet — about 35 percent higher than the 3.9 million square feet in the same period last year, according to real estate brokerage Cushman and Wakefield.

Meanwhile, research from JLL, another commercial real estate firm suggests that office vacancy in Houston is about 25.5 percent, down from 28.4 percent in the first quarter.

Lucian Bukowski, Brent Woodruff. Craig Beyer and Collin Grimes of CBRE represented Baker Hughes in the transaction at Energy Center II while Chrissy Wilson, Matt Pruitt and Christian Canion of JLL represented the landlord, American Realty Advisors.