Case study

An office that learns how it is used

A corporate office where facility teams see how meeting rooms, chairs, washrooms, corridors and elevators are really used, and evolve the space accordingly, with anonymized tracking keeping every person behind the data private.

Meeting room occupancy
Chair availability
Washroom usage
Corridor and elevator traffic

Client: Corporate office
Sector: Workplace analytics
Connectivity: MQTT and HTTP
Hardware: Presence sensors and counters

The setting

The modern office is a living environment

An office floor is one of the most expensive assets a company operates, and one of the least understood. Teams grow and shrink, some rooms are always fought over while others sit empty, and the people responsible for the space usually decide on impressions.

Monitoring how the facilities are used shows how each space actually works, so it can perform better and cost less to run.

Without data

How offices are usually run

Cleaning rounds: On a fixed schedule
Climate and lighting: On a fixed calendar
Refurbishments: On intuition
Privacy: Tracking is anonymized: the picture is of the office, never of the people in it

The deployment

What the office reveals

Four families of variables cover the life of the floor: occupancy of meeting rooms, availability of chairs, use of washrooms, and traffic in corridors and elevators. The sheet below redraws them as the facility team sees them, stream by stream.

Workplace usage figures · As facility teams see themSHEET OS-01 · REV A · STYLIZED

MAP

Meeting room occupancy

FIG. 01

Presence sensing in every meeting room draws a live map of the floor: which rooms are in use, which sit free and which stay chronically underused.

ROOM STATUS · IN USE / FREE / UNDERUSED · PER ROOM HISTORY

CHR

Chair availability

FIG. 02

The platform follows chair availability seat by seat across shared areas: which seats are taken right now and which are free.

SEAT STATE · FREE / TAKEN · SHARED AREAS

WSH

Washroom usage

FIG. 03

Washroom visits are counted through the day, and the counts feed the cleaning plan: crews are dispatched by actual use instead of fixed rounds.

VISITS / HOUR · CLEANING PLAN INPUT

COR

Corridor traffic

FIG. 04

Counters at key corridor points profile foot traffic through the day: where people actually move and when the flows peak.

FOOTFALL / HOUR · GATE COUNTS · ANONYMOUS

ELV

Elevator traffic

FIG. 05

The same tracking covers the elevators, completing the circulation picture: when vertical traffic runs busiest and how it shifts along the day.

ELEVATOR TRAFFIC / HOUR · UP / DOWN FLOWS

DYN

Dynamics of use

FIG. 06

Every stream lands in one usage record that reveals the dynamics of use of the facilities: the raw material for every space decision.

HOUR x DAY MATRIX · USAGE HISTORY

Results

From usage data to action plans

The usage record turns into action plans for cleaning, heating and lighting, and shows how meeting rooms are really used when the organization needs to grow. Space performance goes up while operating costs come down.

For the company

From impressions to usage data

Cleaning
Before: Fixed roundsNow: Where traffic actually went
Climate and light
Before: Fixed calendarNow: Real occupancy
Meeting rooms
Before: Sized on intuitionNow: Sized to the teams' habits

Under the hood

How the deployment is built

The deployment runs on Thinger.io. Presence sensors and people counters register as devices and report over standard protocols such as MQTT or HTTP. Data buckets keep the full usage history, dashboards give facility teams live floor maps, and alarms and endpoints connect the data to cleaning, climate and lighting.

Only counts and presence states reach the platform, never identities, and another floor or building means more devices, not new software.

Presence sensors and anonymous people counters across rooms, corridors, washrooms and elevators report over standard protocols to a workplace console on Thinger.io, where dashboards, buckets and alarms turn usage into cleaning, climate and lighting plans.

Keep reading

Measure how your building really works

Office space utilization is one smart building deployment on Thinger.io. If you want your own workplace, campus or building portfolio to report how it is used, and to act on it, we can help you get there.

Talk to our team Explore the Smart Building solution