OpenSensors Blog

How OpenSensors manages campus-wide utilisation studies 

Our customer has 5000 workspaces spread across multiple buildings, each belonging to departments with independently set work rotations. They knew they were underutilised but lacked the data to verify their knowledge and make informed decisions to reclaim unused space. Now, by working with OpenSensors to gather utilisation data across their office, shared and technical spaces, they are able to reassign spaces based on demand and incorporate saved space into their plans for headcount expansion. Read on to learn more. 

The Problem

A new flexible workplace policy was introduced during the COVID19 restrictions, under which employees were expected to be in the office for 2-3 days a week, but which days these were was up to them and their department heads to define.

Originally this didn’t present any problems; office spaces were assigned on a 1:1 basis and access to other shared and technical spaces was modelled on the back of this with pre-COVID occupancy levels assumed. However, the team responsible for space management and allocation across the campus soon noticed a severe drop in occupancy beyond the expected levels. 

With long-term plans including increasing headcount across departments and the potential creation of a new building to accommodate this growth, the opportunity to and value of optimising space usage in place of expansion was recognised. However, as was the gap in utilisation data required to support these decisions. 

The Solution 

To provide the data required OpenSensors was approached to conduct pilot studies across the spaces in question, showing how workstations and offices are utilised on individual and group bases as well as providing counting data from meeting rooms.

As the pilot progressed and the data provided was verified, a plan to tackle the remaining space was formulated. Department heads were approached by the project leaders and pitched to and the target map grew. 

As the project expanded to include 5000 workstations and the scale of the possible space savings became apparent a new policy was introduced requiring departments to undergo an occupancy study ahead of any changes to space allocation. 

A project plan was developed in which 1000 sensors were to be rotated between departments and locations on a 3-5 month basis, at the end of which their overall requirements were able to be evaluated and its impact on campus-wide utilisation folded into planning. 

Putting the Data to Use

During the first rotation a department’s 120 private offices were studied, with a total square footage of 8,839 - OpenSensors deployed a motion and body-heat sensor at each office’s desk in order to ascertain how many days per week each space was used and for how many hours at a time. 

The team expected some of these offices to be used consistently and regularly, but half or more to be below the schedule set. 

These offices were assigned on a 1:1 basis and employees had committed to a set schedule of 3 days in the office each week, so it would be possible in the early weeks of the study to identify potential ‘low hanging fruit’ - i.e. assets with such low utilisation (<5%) that they can be reclaimed with zero impact. 

A minimum of 3 months data collection is needed when making large or long-lasting decisions, however, enough spaces had consistently close to zero levels of utilisation that the team was quickly able to assist department heads with individual space requests. The team used OpenSensors data to locate sites for transfers and to accommodate headcount growth, 

At the culmination of the study, it was found that 30 of the offices were <5% utilised, and a further 44 were <15% and nearly nobody was following the office schedule. 

The decision was made to take back these 74 underutilised workspaces, which had a combined square footage of 5,616 and in turn convert 2,000 of the reclaimed space into hot desks and locker space. The remaining 46 offices were made shared spaces also, with day rotations established between employees. 

As this process is repeated across departments and buildings and the true extent of underutilised or completely unused space becomes clear the potential for reorganisation and redistribution of space increases dramatically, offering huge savings as headcount growth can be supported without expanding the built environment.