A department needs room to grow. Its existing offices look fully allocated. The next step might seem obvious: find more space, commission a refurbishment or start a building brief. But an allocation plan can tell a very different story from the working day.
That tension runs through the University of Chicago Biological Sciences Division’s experience. In a conversation hosted by CoreNet Global, Steve, who leads the division’s facilities office, describes a growing organisation on a constrained urban campus. The estate had to support recruitment, research and changing ways of working. Before committing further resources, his team needed to understand what its existing space could accommodate.
Working with OpenSensors, the division began collecting utilisation evidence and using it in conversations about investment, sharing and departmental requirements. The most useful result was a stronger basis for deciding what to do next.
Begin with the decision that is creating pressure
The programme grew out of a practical problem. After the pandemic, corridors and offices that had once been busy appeared quieter, while requests for space continued. Faculty and staff were working across offices, clinical settings, teaching spaces and home. An assigned office did not necessarily represent a full week of activity in that room.
Occupancy evidence helped the team investigate that gap. Low use of an office could mean its occupant was doing essential work elsewhere. Understanding the activity, location and departmental requirement mattered before drawing conclusions about the space.
The division brought studies into planning discussions for departments seeking investment or additional space. This created a concrete question for the evidence to answer: could the existing estate meet the requirement, and what would have to change for that to work?
Start where the evidence is clearest
An estate-wide average can hide both obvious opportunities and genuine constraints. The facilities team initially concentrated on offices with very little observed use. These offered a clearer starting point than spaces with complicated, intermittent patterns.
That approach also made the discussion more manageable. Some roles required privacy or particular facilities. Some teams needed to be together at the same time. Recruitment plans had to be considered alongside current demand. The practical task was to distinguish those requirements from the assumption that every new person automatically needed another dedicated office.
For another organisation, a useful first brief might be a department seeking ten more workstations, a suite that appears empty most days, or two teams considering co-location. A bounded question makes it easier to agree on the evidence needed, the people involved and the decision date.
Give departments something worth changing for
Leadership support gave the Chicago programme authority, but departments also needed a reason to participate. Concerns about losing space were real. The facilities team worked through what each department needed and what it could gain from a different arrangement.
Some consolidation discussions were accompanied by improvements to the space departments would retain. Other opportunities involved bringing people together or releasing a suite that could become a shared resource. Over time, the team described departments becoming more willing to offer underused areas.
This is a useful lesson for workplace leaders. A request to surrender offices creates one conversation. A proposal that explains how a team can obtain better facilities, support growth and retain the privacy it needs creates a more constructive one. Utilisation data helps establish the opportunity; the proposed working environment must still make sense to the people using it.
Build the investment case carefully
Finding spare capacity is only the beginning of a financial case. Space may need alterations, furniture, technology or different management before another team can use it. A scattered collection of empty offices may be less useful than a contiguous area. The costs of making a change belong in the comparison.
It also helps to distinguish cash savings from cost avoidance. Reusing a suite may avoid or defer a future capital request without reducing the current year’s expenditure. Both can matter, but they should be described separately and tested against a realistic alternative.
A useful decision brief brings together the requirement, measured demand, peak-day constraints, growth assumptions, viable options and the cost and risk of each. It should identify the person who can authorise the change and how the outcome will be checked.
Use evidence to open the conversation
The closing advice from the division’s facilities lead was to “make data the starting point, not the conclusion”. That captures the value of the programme. Evidence creates room to question established assumptions, while people still have to agree which changes will support their work.
At OpenSensors, this is the kind of decision we support: combining useful existing information with measured utilisation, deploying sensors where reliable evidence is missing, and helping teams evaluate practical options. Tessellate extends that work into technology-enabled workplace strategy, connecting evidence with scenarios, trade-offs and stakeholder decision briefs.
If you have a live request for more space, a consolidation proposal or an investment decision approaching, bring us that question. We can help scope the evidence needed to evaluate it.
