Meeting Room Occupancy
Background
We collaborated with an estates and facilities team managing multi-occupancy buildings that include high-quality offices, lab spaces, conference facilities, and meeting rooms. The team aimed to collect room occupancy data, particularly in meeting rooms, to inform strategic space planning.
A critical requirement was to ensure the project was minimally disruptive to ongoing operations, using technology that was unobtrusive and could be removed without damaging the building fabric.
Before the project, the estates team could see when meeting rooms were booked in Outlook, but not whether they were actually being used or whether the room size matched the number of people present. This created a gap between intended use and real-world occupancy.
Solution
We implemented a solution using sensor technology to gather high-quality data on space utilisation. Our team installed sensors employing both Passive Infrared (PIR) and Infrared (IR) laser line-crossing technology to monitor room occupancy across multiple spaces over a six-month period.
Over six months, we monitored 11 communal rooms, combining booking information with evidence of actual occupancy and headcount. This enabled the client to compare Outlook booking intentions with how rooms were genuinely being used day to day.
We provided the client with a live dashboard and monthly insight summaries, integrating with the local room booking system to track capacity lost due to no-shows.
Key Insights
- The client was generally well served by its current resources, with meeting rooms consistently available for booking.
- An additional 10% capacity could be freed up if no-show meetings were cancelled in the booking system and if rooms from early-finished meetings were released back into the pool.
- The analysis of meeting sizes indicated that small meeting pods would be the most suitable option for any additional capacity needed.
- The booking diary was inaccurate in both directions: individual rooms were occupied without a booking for up to 26% of working time, while booked rooms stood empty for up to 23%.
- Across the seven standard rooms included in the client summary, one to four people accounted for 59% to 90% of occupied periods.
- Small groups were regularly using rooms designed for substantially more people, showing that the room mix did not fully reflect actual demand.
Impact
The evidence directly informed the client’s next meeting-room refurbishment programme. Rather than relying on a smaller number of larger rooms, the client used the data to provide more small-group rooms, creating a room mix that better reflected actual demand.
The central lesson is simple: a booking diary records intention; occupancy data reveals how an estate is really being used.