For the public sector and healthcare
Every square metre is public money, and every measurement has to survive a works council and a tender.
A ministry, a municipality, a hospital: the estate is large, the lease events are political, and the case for changing anything has to be published with its reasoning. At the same time, the fastest ways to measure a building — cameras, badge logs, individual tracking — are exactly the ones a works council, a privacy officer and a newspaper will not accept. The method has to be defensible before it is accurate.
What you are measured on, and what the evidence has to do with it
A public estate or a hospital is held to three standards at once, and each of them is currently met with less evidence than an audit would ask for anywhere else.
Efficient use of public money
A consolidation, a disposal or a renewal has to show that the retained space is the space that is used. A norm per FTE is a policy; measured use by activity is evidence. Auditors and councils increasingly know the difference.
Space that serves the primary process
In a hospital the office estate competes with clinical space; in a ministry the policy floors compete with the service counters. Which teams need what, and when, decides where the square metres go — and a single arrangement rarely fits a ward, an outpatient department and a legal team.
A decision that can be published
Public decisions get requested, appealed and reported. A measurement with a method that can be named, a privacy position that was agreed before it began and a benchmark it was compared against survives that. An estimate does not.
What the other tables are saying
The estate function has a norm per workplace and a portfolio plan. HR has a hybrid framework and a works council to keep on side. Finance has a budget round. The privacy officer has a veto and is usually consulted last. Four functions, and the measurement that would serve all of them is blocked by the one that was asked too late.
The order of operations is the difference. When the privacy position is agreed with the works council as part of choosing the method, when the instruments can be looked up by anyone who asks, and when the result is reported by team and location and never by person, the same dataset serves the estate plan, the hybrid framework and the budget round — and the privacy officer signed it first, not last.
How it runs, from your seat
A portfolio decision with a political date on it
A lease event, a consolidation programme, a new-build business case or a hybrid framework that has to go to the council or the board. The question is the same as in any organisation; the scrutiny is not.
Establish whether anything needs to change at all
A quick scan of current use, before a programme is commissioned. Some of these projects should not happen, and in a public body finding that out early is cheaper — and far easier to explain.
Choose the method the works council can sign
Observation studies, sensors and Wi-Fi each carry a different privacy exposure. The method is chosen per building, the privacy position is agreed with the works council and the privacy officer before anything is installed, and the specification is written against the method — which is also what the tender is scored on.
Procurement, with the method rationale attached
Where the measurement goes through a formal tender, the method choice is what the scoring turns on. Certification, the contracting entity, hosting and the processing agreement are supplied as documents, on request and under confidentiality, for the tender response.
The evidence base, delivered
Occupancy gives measured use classified by activity and set against the benchmark. Dynamics gives what each team needs from the place, on published instruments. Taxonomy turns both into a programme of requirements with area and cost per space type and scenarios the council can compare.
Re-measured, and published with its reasoning
Twelve months on, the estate is measured again against the baseline and the objective. That is a post-occupancy evaluation an auditor can read, and it is the evidence the next programme starts from.
Where the products touch your work
The same six products every role sees. For a public estate, three carry the business case and three keep it defensible.
Occupancy
Measured use by activity, to a method commissioned by government in 1998 and applied since 2001, against a benchmark of more than sixty million datapoints. Observation, sensors or Wi-Fi, chosen per building with the privacy position agreed first.
Czytaj dalejDecideTaxonomy
The programme of requirements a council, a board or a procurement team can compare: ninety-plus space types with area and cost, sharing ratios modelled, scenarios side by side. The business case is the brief.
Czytaj dalejMeasureDynamics
What each team needs from the place, including the cognitive and environmental preferences that decide whether a colleague can work in an open floor at all — on published instruments, aggregated by team. It is how an inclusion commitment becomes a floor plan.
Czytaj dalejDecideBalance
The hybrid framework tested against how departments actually work, before it is announced. Where a single rule breaks is visible per team, with its space, cost, commute and retention effect.
Czytaj dalejKeep it trueBooking
Desks, rooms and booked against used, on the Microsoft or Google environment you already run. The demand signal between two measurements, so the next business case starts with a number.
Czytaj dalejKeep it trueEntry Pass
What each employee gets back: their own workplace guide, visible to nobody else. It is the answer to 'what is in it for staff' and the reason the second measurement is answered.
Czytaj dalejWhat goes in the tender annex
The architecture is the compliance argument
Aggregation-first is how the method is built, not a setting. No individual-level behavioural record is created, and the data processing agreement describes what the product actually does rather than what a generic template allows.
Certification and the contracting entity, explained
ISO 27001 certificate 0202968 is held by Workplaced Technologies Ltd, via Intertek under UKAS. A European body contracts with Workplaced Technologies Europe B.V., KvK 95622462. Tenders ask for certification of the contracting party; the scope statement and the relationship between the two entities are supplied together.
Hosting, sub-processors, questionnaires
Data stays within the EU; sub-processors are listed in the DPA and changes are notified. Security questionnaires, DPIAs and tender annexes go straight to the person who owns the documentation — say so in the message and skip the routing.
Read before the meeting
Measuring without monitoring people
The easiest way to measure a workplace is the fastest way to lose it. The privacy position, in full.
Security and compliance
Certification, entities, hosting and the processing agreement — written for the person filling in the questionnaire.
Data processing agreement
What is processed, at what level, by whom, and where.
Heritage
A company founded in 2023, on a method commissioned by the Ministry of Economic Affairs in 1998.
What public bodies and hospitals ask first
What security documentation is available?
Workplaced Technologies Ltd holds ISO 27001 certificate 0202968, via Intertek under UKAS.
The certificate, the sub-processor list, the standard data processing agreement and the penetration test summary are handed over on request, under confidentiality — before contracting, and without a procurement process running. They exist and they are current; they are not published on the open web. Ask and you have them within two working days.
Do you collect personal data?
It depends on the product, and the architecture reports patterns rather than people by design. That is a decision taken before the first sensor, not a policy added after a works council asked.
Product by product: Occupancy and Dynamics report at team, department and location level and create no individual behavioural record. Two products are personal by nature and say so: Entry Pass shows a person their own profile and nobody else's; Booking shows colleagues where someone has chosen to book a desk, because that is what a reservation is for.
What is processed, on what basis, who may see it and how long it is kept is settled per project before implementation, and written down.
Is Wi-Fi occupancy data anonymous?
We describe it as aggregated, which is the honest word. It produces utilisation at building, floor and zone level and is not a tool for observing an individual.
How far that goes depends on the network, the configuration and the contract, so the answer for your building is the one in your agreement rather than the one on this page.
Who owns the data?
That is settled in the agreement between you, Workplaced and any partner involved, along with access, permitted use and retention. It is a contractual question and a website is the wrong place to answer it in general terms.
Can you work across countries?
Yes, and comparability is the point: twelve buildings measured twelve ways produce twelve stories, and one method produces a ranking you can act on.
Language, local workplace practice, works council process and privacy requirements differ per market, and the delivery model adapts to that.
Bring the questionnaire, or the tender
Twenty minutes, or the documents by return. We will tell you which method your works council is most likely to sign, what the certification and hosting position is for your contracting entity, and what it takes to have a measured baseline before the business case is due.