Space Utilization

Enterprises can derive benefits from studying employee utilization of corporate spaces and typical traffic flows through their buildings. Understanding space utilization is important for HR departments and real estate professionals in particular, and can cut down on costs for companies as they better understand how to properly use floor space.

With the ability to monitor where people are at any given time based on the devices that they're carrying, a corporation can look into the actual usage of the space, how it was designed and how it was planned, versus how it is actually being used. This can allow organizations to increase productivity and efficiency by analyzing the use of that space and then changing the way it is used. Further, by monitoring people passively based on the devices they carry, the movement of visitors and not just employees can be tracked.

THE PROBLEM

Bob Baxley, co-founder at Bastille Networks discusses "Space Utilization".

Building owners and landlords want to understand how their properties are used throughout the course of the day and the week. Employee badge systems only provide part of the answer as they don’t include visitors and they rarely capture intra-building movement or egress events. It is common for organizations to hire consulting firms to collect data on how employees use corporate spaces. This is typically a manual process that involves sending a person on site to observe employees over several days then run reports on floor plan use. Unfortunately, this sort of assessment is expensive, covers a single or a few points in time and is not very accurate.

Space Utilization problems include:

  • Improper use of building space

  • Improper use of building amenities

  • Space under-utilization and inefficiencies over time, both within and outside normal business hours.

  • Traffic flow

THE REQUIREMENTS FOR A SPACE UTILIZATION SOLUTION

A Space Utilization solution needs to:

  1. Provide visibility into the whereabouts of employees, visitors, and their devices on a corporate campus

  2. Give real-time updates of space usage

  3. Provide reports that can be used to set better building procedures

  4. Monitor 24 x 7 to show activity inside and outside normal hours of operation

  5. Work passively and does not require building users to carry a special device

Specifically, a solution must:

  • Detect all devices operating in the wireless spectrum, to include but not limited to, Wi-Fi, Cellular, Bluetooth, and the hundreds of other protocols in the Internet of Things (IoT)

  • Allow for continuous, persistent monitoring of how a space is utilized by observing wireless device movements

  • Show employee ingress and egress in aggregated form for predetermined areas in the environment, creating the ability to track room usage, traffic flow, and employee congregation areas

  • Be always on

  • Give better understanding of employee patterns of life including: who met with whom and when, where people spend the majority of their time, and when a person enters a restricted area

  • Use machine learning algorithms to group devices into RF personas so that mapping can occur between devices and people

What kinds of organizations need this solution?

  • Landlords, building owners and organizations that are interested in understanding how their corporate spaces are occupied and used inside and outside normal business hours.