For real estate directors
You sign for the square metres. The number underneath them is usually a guess.
A lease event arrives with a date, and the brief that follows is built from headcount, a sharing ratio and whatever the last project used. It is the weakest-evidenced document in the chain, and everything after it — the search, the design, the tender — inherits its errors. Measured use, classified by activity and priced per space type, is the version of that brief you can put your name to.
What you are measured on, and what the evidence has to do with it
A real estate director is judged on three things a year after the decision, when the argument that produced it has been forgotten.
Cost per square metre, and how many of them
The rate is negotiated; the quantity is assumed. Most portfolios carry space that was sized for a headcount and a working pattern that no longer exist. Measured use is the only number that separates the two.
Whether the space works once it is built
A fit-out that is full on Tuesday and empty on Friday, or full of people looking for a room, is a brief that was wrong — not a design that was. The activity mix is what the programme should have been written from.
Whether the decision survives the board
A disposal or a renewal that arrives with a comparative figure and a measured baseline gets approved. One that arrives with a ratio gets deferred, and a deferred lease decision is an expensive one.
What the other tables are saying
HR arrives with an engagement score and a hybrid policy that has not been tested against the building. Finance arrives with a cost per head and a preference for the smaller option. You arrive with a lease date and a brief built from headcount. Three functions, three definitions of the same building, and the decision is made by whoever has the earliest deadline — which is usually you.
One dataset changes the meeting. Measured use by activity, the reason behind it by team, and each option priced on space, cost, commute and retention at once. When the brief carries that, you are not asking HR and finance to trust the ratio; you are showing them the number they would have asked for.
How it runs, from your seat
A lease event, a merger, a floor that feels wrong
Something forces the question — usually a date on a lease, occasionally a complaint that will not go away. You hear it first. The one thing worth doing in the first week is checking whether a measured baseline already exists.
Establish whether anything needs to change at all
A quick scan of current occupancy and activity, before anyone commissions a design. Some of these projects should not happen, and finding that out in week two is cheaper than in month eight.
The measurement the brief will be written from
Occupancy gives measured use classified by activity, set against the benchmark. Dynamics gives the reason behind it, by team. Together they are the evidence the brief has been missing — and the answer to 'how do you know'.
A programme of requirements a supplier can price
Taxonomy turns the measured mix into a space programme: ninety-plus space types, each with area, enclosure, equipment and cost, and a business case with scenarios. It removes the hand translation between strategy and tender that is where most briefs drift.
Design against a mix that has already been costed
Your advisor, architect and contractor lead this phase. The difference is that costing happened while the mix was still being chosen, rather than after the tender came back — the most common reason a design gets reopened.
A post-occupancy evaluation that compares to something
Twelve months on, the space is measured again against the original baseline and the stated objective. Booking keeps a live demand signal running in between, so the next lease event starts with a number instead of a search for one.
Where the products touch your work
The same six products every role sees. For real estate, three do the work of the brief and three keep it honest.
Occupancy
The baseline. How the space is actually used, by activity and by space type, to a method that has been applied since 2001 and a benchmark of more than sixty million datapoints. Observation, sensors or Wi-Fi — chosen per building, with the privacy position agreed before anything is installed.
Czytaj dalejDecideTaxonomy
The brief. Measured activity becomes a programme of requirements with area and cost per space type, sharing ratios modelled, and scenarios a board can compare. This is the document the search and the tender are run on.
Czytaj dalejMeasureDynamics
Why the use looks the way it does, team by team, and what people need from the place. It is the difference between a floor that is empty because nobody needs it and one that is empty because it does not work.
Czytaj dalejDecideBalance
The hybrid policy, priced on the building. Each option HR is considering carries its space consequence, so the policy and the portfolio are decided together rather than in sequence.
Czytaj dalejKeep it trueBooking
Booked against used, continuously. The demand signal that tells you the baseline is ageing before the next lease event does.
Czytaj dalejKeep it trueEntry Pass
Mostly HR's product — but it is what the people who were measured get back, and it is why the second measurement gets the same response as the first.
Czytaj dalejWhy an advisor, a works council and a board can all work from it
A method older than the vendor
The occupancy method was commissioned in 1998 and has been applied continuously since 2001. Your advisor can check what it measures and what it does not; so can the auditor who asks how the baseline was produced.
Aggregation first, by design
Use is reported by space, team and location, never by individual. The privacy position is agreed with the works council as part of the method choice, not negotiated after the sensors are in.
One space model, whatever the feed
Sensor, Wi-Fi and booking signals reconcile against one definition of a space. Multi-vendor deployments usually fall apart at exactly that point; the brief that follows should not.
Read before the meeting
Should we renew, downsize or move?
The decision this page serves: what a lease event needs measured, and in what order.
Do we need this much space?
Occupied is not the same as used. The difference is the brief.
Should I stay in my current office, or move?
A use case: 13,500 m² assumed, 10,000 measured, and $1.2M a year from deciding to stay.
The different ways to measure occupancy
Observation, Wi-Fi, sensors, computer vision and reservation data compared — what each costs and where it stops.
What real estate directors ask first
What is Occupancy?
Occupancy measures how offices are actually used, through observation studies, IoT sensors or Wi-Fi triangulation. It classifies the activity rather than only recording presence, maps utilisation onto your own floorplans, and reports on one method so this year and next year can be compared.
The method was commissioned in 1998 by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and has been tested against real buildings ever since.
How do we choose a method?
Start from the decision. A lease decision on one building is a short observation study. Ongoing monitoring of a portfolio is sensors or Wi-Fi. A brief for a fit-out needs activity classification, which observation does best.
Budget, existing infrastructure and what your works council will accept usually narrow it further.
IoT sensors or Wi-Fi?
They answer different questions. Sensors give continuous, space-level readings where they are installed. Wi-Fi analytics derive utilisation from aggregated network activity and give building-, floor- and zone-level patterns without installing anything.
Wi-Fi is aggregated by design. It is not a way to see what an individual did, and we will not present it as one.
What is Taxonomy?
Taxonomy turns measured behaviour into a space programme. It holds more than ninety space types, each with area, enclosure, equipment and cost, and derives the mix from how your teams work — personas to start, Dynamics and Occupancy data where you have them — rather than from a template.
The output is a document a supplier can price, which is where most workplace projects lose months.
How long does it take?
It depends on the buildings, the method and how many people take part, so what we will not do is publish an average implementation time. What we can say is the shape: scoping in weeks rather than months; an occupancy round runs over a defined measurement period agreed up front; Dynamics closes when the response window closes. We commit to dates in the proposal, per project, and we would rather be held to those than to an average.
Bring the lease date
Twenty minutes. We will tell you whether a baseline already exists for the building, which method fits it, what it takes to have a measured brief before the option deadline, and what the study would cost.