3 reasons why sensors are your most valuable space utilization tool

The major metric most organisations are seeking is space utilization – how much a space is being used and when it is being used. Of course, we’re also interested in agility ratios, occupant data and cost centre chargeback, but at its core, we believe space management is driven by understanding utilization and allocation.

Currently, most space utilization studies are focused on tracking people – not spaces. simple.space flips this paradigm around because we’re interested in understanding and leveraging value from the office space itself, not the people.

This change removes many of the barriers around employee privacy, data security – and reduces the cost of implementing space utilization reporting significantly.

simple.space uses sensors to collect real time space utilization data for our client’s office space to provide the most accurate measurement and understanding of space. The ongoing utilization reporting provided, also gives a better understanding of workplace behaviours.

1. Sensors are excellent value for money

Sensors provide 24/7/365 coverage of your space. When compared to survey studies, where people are employed to eyeball a space for a period of time (something like 2 weeks), the value for money per unit for a sensor is absolutely unbeatable.

Our clients tend to have a particular problem they need to solve for a certain area; we will set up the sensors for a period in one space, then move them to another area to tackle the next issue.

This is an incredibly cost effective and manageable way to use sensors to undertake space utilization tracking. We can set up as little as 50 sensors to run a pilot, up to a whole building or portfolio rollout.

2. Sensors provide deep data-driven insights

Sensors can provide game changing insight, by producing repeated observations of the same space over long periods of time. Compared to a manual survey, which might capture the workplace over a period of 2 weeks, sensors are taking observations every second of every day.

This allows you to make real, evidence-based decisions with greater confidence because you know what’s really going on in your space.

The depth of reporting and understanding you’ll get is almost incomparable to the shallow reach of a survey. Sensors provide instant real time feedback.

Our clients have identified and fixed issues they didn’t previously have visibility on and are able to check things like cleaning schedules are being met simply through the data produced by the sensors.

3. Sensors are accurate

When we compared a manual people counting study for a particular building to the simple.space sensors, we found that the actual workplace occupancy rate was lower than the manual observation survey reported.

This is due to accuracy issues with manual surveys – they are often completed over a brief time frame which can give an incomplete view; they perform perhaps one or two observations an hour for each space as compared to each second using a sensor; they can’t account for staff being in meetings, out for coffee or at the printer.

Sensors give a depth of data that provides much greater accuracy that a manual survey.

Each sensor takes an observation every second of the day.  20 sensors in a team space will produce over 800,000 recorded minutes of data in a 4-week period.

Reporting is then provided for each sensor for each day as well as aggregated data to provide an overview and give you key insights into how and when the space is being used. Reporting is provided for each sensor and aggregated to provide an overview of how and when of the workplace occupancy profile.

simple.space uses a research-standard data methodology designed to give you the most sensible results.

Want to know more?

If you’d like to find out more about how sensors can support your workplace space management, please get in touch with Raf Gouel via LinkedIn or email info@simple.space.

Or, download our brochure Sensor Based Space Utilisation as a Service.

3 ways data visualisation can revolutionise your workspace

Data visualisation is everywhere these days. Stunning infographics, gorgeous scatter graphs, insightful pie charts and beautifully designed tables bring to life the vast swathes of data that our society produces every day, hour and second. A modern take on the idea of visual communication, data visualisation is about making complex data more accessible and useful, helping us understand and analyse data quickly to gain deeper insights into the relationship between things.

 

Humans are visual beings. We retain about 70% more information when it’s presented to us in a visual format. One of our missions at simple.space is to connect and enable humans in workplaces to be more in-tune with the space surrounding them.

 

How does this relate to managing your workspace?

To quote Dr. Thoralf Sundt of Mayo Clinic, “If I can see it, I can fix it.”  The reverse must also be true – it’s hard to fix what you can’t see (Lean.org have said this so succinctly elsewhere that we can’t take credit for this insight). To support and sustain growth in your workplace, you need to be able to identify the problems in the way you carry out your work in a the physical sense – the desks, chairs and computers that allow your human capital investment to carry on (or cramp) your business. And to get back to Dr. Sundt, the most effective way to do this is using data visualisation techniques.

 

Here are three things you didn’t know about data visualisation and how it can benefit the way you manage your work space

1. It can empower your employees

Traditional data modeling is the empire of the geek, the bailiwick of the excel wizz. This means many of us – the average HR or office managers who don’t get their kicks from crunching out a VLookup –  can’t get the insight we need to make evidence based decisions on staffing and space management issues.

 

2. It helps you see what’s around the corner

Office relocations and new seating arrangements require multiple scenarios to be planned, ongoing collaboration and layers of approvals to deliver great outcomes – and comparisons between the old and new are a must in defining the new world order.

But It’s hard to evaluate the current and future state with a set of paper floorplans and some highlighters. Just like a map is for driving directions to your destination, visualising your work spaces helps you understand how to reach your desired outcome much more quickly and simply.

 

3. It creates a sense of community in a workplaces that are becoming more screen-based and less people-focused

Most of us have lived and worked in office environments with little visibility on who is who and just where they might be sitting. Staff directories are usually dated, you’re unsure who to contact, or perhaps there’s more than one “Steve” in the legal department. Once you’ve worked out it’s Steve-from-Sydney, not Steve the dragon boat racing enthusiast, directions to find where Steve sits are scarce and it’s hard to know which desk belongs to whom or why no one is sitting in that corner. Data visualisation gives you a new way to put a face to a name, a desk to a person and useful directions to find them both.