28 questions · 7 groups

Everything people ask before they join.

These are the questions the front desk hears, grouped so you can find yours, answered the way we would answer them standing next to you on the floor. Where we do not publish something, and notice terms, parking and printing limits are all on that list, the page says so plainly and hands you the number of somebody who can settle it.

A member with earphones in, working on a laptop at a desk against a red accent wall at WorkBench, a coffee beside the keyboard.

The short version

Six answers, before the long ones.

Most visits start with the same six facts. Here they are on their own, so nobody has to open an accordion to find out what a desk costs.

One day
PKR 2,000
A month, shared desk
PKR 20,000
The floor
Open 24/7 for members
Reception
Staffed 9AM to 9PM, Monday to Saturday
Meeting rooms
Included on every plan
Where
13-D, D Block, Valencia Town, Lahore

Group 1 of 7

Plans and billing

What we sell, what it costs, and the parts of the arrangement this website deliberately leaves to a person.

Everything we sell comes down to four numbers. One day on the floor is PKR 2,000. A seat on the shared floor is PKR 20,000 monthly. Holding one particular desk in your name is PKR 25,000 monthly. A room for a team is PKR 25,000 for every seat inside it, monthly.

Shared desks are sold by shift, and there are three of them: morning, evening and night. That is a pricing arrangement and not a curfew: the building is open to every member around the clock whichever shift is on the invoice. We publish no clock times against those three words on purpose, because the hours you may use the floor and the hours your membership is priced for are two different things and blurring them helps nobody. If the exact window matters to your work, have it confirmed on 0311 2200818 before you pay for a month.

None of the three appears anywhere on this website, and the omission is deliberate rather than an oversight. Terms are the part of any arrangement you want to be holding in writing from somebody able to sign it, not reading off a web page that could be a year behind. Ask on the tour or ring 0311 2200818, and take the answer away written down.

A day pass exists for precisely that reason, and it settles the question more cheaply than a month does. PKR 2,000 covers one full working day and opens the same doors and the same rooms that a monthly member walks through. Come on an ordinary midweek day rather than a quiet one, and judge the place on what you actually find.

Group 2 of 7

The space and your desk

Where you would sit, what stays there when you leave, and where the rest of the day happens.

Wherever is free on the open floor when you walk in. That is precisely what the shared plan buys, and at PKR 20,000 monthly it is the least expensive way to be here every day. The alternative is PKR 25,000, which pins one desk to your name and leaves whatever you put on it where you put it.

On a dedicated desk, yes, that is the plan's whole description of itself: the desk is kept for you as you left it. On a shared desk you take whatever is free that morning, so anything you brought goes home with you again. We publish nothing about lockers or storage in either direction, so if leaving equipment behind is the detail that decides this for you, put it to the front desk on 0311 2200818 and get a straight answer before you pay for anything.

Away from the desks, which is the entire reason the smaller rooms exist. There are two single seat booths for a call, a pod room sized for a quiet conversation between two, and three huddle rooms for when there are more people on this end than the other one. A call does not have to be taken in a stairwell here and it does not have to be taken over the open floor either.

Eating happens on a cafeteria floor, and the word floor is doing real work in that sentence. Every plan carries tea, green tea and coffee with no limit put on them, and the vending machine handles whatever those do not. The game room holds table tennis and foosball, there are prayer rooms for gents and for ladies, and none of that is an upgrade on top of the desk.

Group 3 of 7

Meeting rooms

The rooms, who pays for them, and the two things about the fit-out worth knowing before you arrive with a session planned.

No. Rooms come with the desk on every plan, day pass included. The one honest qualification is that it is a quota counted by the month, not an open bar, and the team stretches it wherever it can be stretched. We word it that way so nobody is told at the door that a promise made on a website does not hold in the week everybody wants the same slot.

Inside Pulse, which is the member portal, at pulse.workbench.pk. There is nothing to sign into before you join, so until then the booking is made by whoever picks up 0311 2200818.

There are seven bookable rooms: Board Room for 10 to 12, Huddle Room 3 for 4, Huddle Room 1 for 6, Huddle Room 2 for 4, Pod Room for 2, Booth 1 for 1, Booth 2 for 1. The largest of them therefore seats 10 to 12, which makes it a room for a client meeting or a small training group and not a room for a conference. We would rather put that on the page than at the door.

The board room carries a screen and it is the only room that does. No whiteboard exists anywhere on the premises: writing is done on the glass instead, and markers are put out for exactly that. On cooling: Board Room and Huddle Room 3 are air conditioned and the smaller rooms are not, which accounts for most of the gap between one hourly rate and the next.

Yes, on an hourly basis. The rates start at PKR 1,000 and reach PKR 2,500 for the board room. Ring 0311 2200818 with a date and a number of chairs, and ask on that same call about anything the room absolutely has to contain, since the fit-out is not identical from one room to another.

Group 4 of 7

Access, hours and security

When the building is yours, when a member of staff is in it, and what we can and cannot tell you about the rest.

Open 24/7 for members. That is the flat answer to the flat question, and the Sunday everybody asks about next is already inside it. What it does not cover is anything needing a member of staff, which is a separate answer and gets its own question below.

The desk is staffed from 9AM to 9PM, Monday to Saturday. Anything requiring a human being belongs in that window: a tour, a plan, a question about an invoice, a room booked on your behalf. Outside it the floor works exactly as it always does for anyone who already has a membership.

There is a security guard, and there are CCTV cameras. A concierge appears on the list of what every plan includes, around the clock. Anything more specific than those three facts is better heard from somebody who works here at 2AM than from us, so ask one of them on your way through, or spend a day pass finding out.

Nothing on this website makes a claim about parking, and that is on purpose: we have nothing verified enough to print. It is a fair thing to want settled before you drive across a city, so ring 0311 2200818 and put it to the front desk, who will tell you what is actually true today.

Group 5 of 7

Internet and power

The two things that decide whether a workspace is worth leaving the house for, and the numbers we refuse to print about them.

We describe it as high speed internet and stop exactly there. No megabit figure appears anywhere on this site, because a reading taken once, at one desk, on one afternoon is not something we could promise you at your desk on a Thursday. Run your own speed test while you are standing on the floor rather than in reception. Nobody will mind, and it beats any number we could have printed.

There is a generator and there is UPS backup, both of them inside the price of every plan rather than sold as an upgrade. What we do not publish is a runtime or a changeover figure. So if a single interrupted minute would genuinely cost you something, ask the front desk what happened during the last few cuts and judge the place on that answer instead of on this paragraph.

Printing is one of the eleven things every plan includes, and photocopying and scanning are on the amenity list beside it. A page limit is a different matter and no figure for one is published here, so if you print in real volume, say so on 0311 2200818 first rather than assume it either way.

Group 6 of 7

Community and events

The part of any workspace pitch that is easiest to claim and hardest to show, answered with what little can actually be shown.

Events, and every photograph of one on this site was taken inside these buildings rather than bought from a stock library. The gallery is the whole of our evidence for that claim, and a minute spent looking at it will tell you more than a paragraph from us about culture ever could.

No website should be trusted on that question, ours included, because the flattering version is the easy one to write. What can be checked instead is the 101 five-star reviews on the Google listing. Read a handful of them and you will have a fairer picture of the room than any paragraph from the people who run it.

Yes. Rooms get booked for exactly that, and a repeating slot can be arranged instead of a fresh booking every Tuesday. Size is the thing that decides it, since the biggest room seats 10 to 12. Ring 0311 2200818 with what you have in mind and somebody will say plainly whether the room fits it.

Group 7 of 7

Visiting and booking a tour

Getting here, getting in, and the two arrangements that involve the address rather than a desk.

13-D, D Block, Valencia Town, Lahore 54784. The Google listing will route you door to door from wherever you are starting, and it is also where the reviews live if you want to read them before you set off.

Both work. Arriving unannounced is perfectly normal while there is somebody at the desk to meet you, which is from 9AM to 9PM, Monday to Saturday. Booking ahead buys one thing only, and that is the certainty that the person who can answer your particular question is not out when you get here.

You walk the buildings, sit down at a desk, look inside the rooms and ask whatever this page did not settle. Nothing is roped off and nobody hurries you along. Bring the awkward questions in particular, because those are the ones that make the trip worth taking.

Yes, that much is confirmed. What no website can do is the part specific to how your own company is set up, so ring 0311 2200818 and have the details confirmed by a person before anything is filed.

That is a separate and much smaller arrangement: PKR 5,000 monthly, plus PKR 5,000 charged once at setup, covering use of the address for reference and mail handled at reception. It comes with no desk whatsoever, which is the entire reason it costs a fraction of one.

Still not answered

Then ask a person.

A page can only carry what has been verified. Anything past that, whether a room is free on a particular Thursday, what an invoice looks like, what happened during the last power cut, comes back faster from the front desk than from anywhere else, and it comes back from a person rather than a form.

13-D, D Block, Valencia Town, Lahore 54784

Call 0311 2200818 Ask on WhatsApp, opens in a new tab

Or write to info@workbench.pk, or come and look: get directions, opens in a new tab.

Looking in through the glass street doors of WorkBench to the reception desk and the amber W on the fluted wall