Or the reservation schedule in their office
hoteling solution or signup sheets. But
visual walkthroughs can only show
occupancy and vacancy information at a
specific moment in the day (which makes it
hardly useful). And badge scans don't
account for when multiple employees enter
together, and usually don't track movement
throughout the facility. If your office
reservation system doesn't account for no-
shows or unscheduled use, it's not giving
you an accurate representation of how
employees utilize these spaces throughout
the day.
You can't truly optimize an office without
data. If you don't track space utilization
metrics, your plan hinges on assumptions,
is bound to have oversights that cause
avoidable problems, and won't achieve
your goals in an optimal way. You might
remove a space that was critical to a
department—or downsize it to the point
that it becomes unusable. Or you may
create more workstations than you need
for particular roles or types of work.
In some government facilities, presence
detection is a vital component of security.
You need to know who's in the building and
where in the building they are at any given
time. But this information also provides
valuable insights into how your space is
being used, especially when tracked over
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Suppose you have specific health goals
you want to achieve this year. Maybe you
want to lose 10 pounds and exercise 30
minutes per day. But there are a few
problems:
You don't have a scale
You don't know how much you weigh
You aren't sure what to count as
exercise
You aren't tracking your activity
anywhere
It would be ridiculous—but it's also not so
far from how office optimization works at
many organizations. They have specific
goals around reducing square footage,
finding space for growth, or improving
space utilization, but they aren't tracking
how their space is being used in
meaningful ways. They don't know how
much space they truly need, how
frequently a given space is occupied, or
how their choices may disrupt operations.
Before you can optimize your office space,
you need visibility into your space
utilization. Often, due to a lack of
technology, space planners are forced to
settle for extremely limited space
utilization data. Perhaps administrators
occasionally perform visual walkthroughs,
checking which spaces are occupied at a
given time. Or they rely on badge swipes.
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Prepare Your Office for Optimization
3
The Government Agency's Guide to Office Optimization
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