Heritage
A company founded in 2023, on work that started long before it
The platform is new. The method underneath it is not, and the distinction matters, because a claim about twenty-five years of measurement means nothing unless you can say where those twenty-five years happened.
The timeline
1998
The method is developed for the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs
Rogier Woudsma develops a methodology and research instrument for systematically measuring workplace occupancy, commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs.
2001
The work moves into RRIS
The work is brought into RRIS, in the same year the Center for People and Buildings is founded in Delft to bridge research and practice.
2001–2024
Thousands of studies in the Netherlands and Belgium
Measurement across the Netherlands and Belgium for ministries, municipalities, universities and commercial organisations. The Dutch central government is the largest single client.
2023
Workplaced is founded
Adel El Mawla, Nick Nunnington and Asaël Akkerman found Workplaced to put workplace decisions on evidence that can be explained.
2024
RRIS's activities move to Workplaced
The research logic is kept; the technology is rebuilt from scratch.
April 2025
The platform goes live
The activities moved across before the product existed rather than after, which is why the method is older than the company.
What changed, and what did not
A study you commission once, or a measurement capability you keep.
Traditional occupancy research required external observers walking a building for days. That is still possible, and for some questions it is still the best instrument. What changed is that it is no longer the only option: an organisation's own people can carry out the observation rounds, with Workplaced supplying the methodology, the software, the study design, the processing and the analysis.
That is the whole difference between a study you commission once and a measurement capability you keep. A method built for the Dutch government became a self-delivered occupancy research model, which is also why measuring twelve buildings no longer costs twelve times measuring one.
The academic line
Professor Nick Nunnington, co-founder and advisor, has been running corporate real estate education internationally since 1998 and is a co-author of Corporate Real Estate Asset Management: Strategy and Implementation (Routledge). The models the platform uses are the models he teaches and examines, which is an unusual position for a software company and the reason the science page can be checked rather than asserted.
IFMEC Academy, a centre of expertise in Facility and Enabling Management since 1994, is now part of Workplaced. IFMEC issues its own qualifications and runs its own curriculum, admissions and examination.
Related
- Our science
The models, and where each one's limits are.
- Academy
The education side, and IFMEC Academy, now part of Workplaced.
- Occupancy
What the 1998 method is today.