From utilisation data to confident estate decisions: How analytics turns evidence into action
Consolidation, repurposing and capital planning are no longer controversial ideas. What boards increasingly challenge is whether the evidence behind those decisions is strong enough to support real change. Estates leaders are expected to show not only that space can be optimised, but exactly where, by how much, and without compromising operational resilience. In publicly funded healthcare environments, those decisions must also withstand governance scrutiny, financial oversight and operational challenge.
The real question therefore is not whether change is needed, but how to make space decisions that are defensible, proportionate and trusted.
A recent deployment within a US Top 20 university medical centre illustrates what happens when utilisation data is used properly to support estate decision making.
Quantifying the opportunity
Once utilisation is measured rigorously, a consistent pattern emerges across hybrid estates: the capacity buildings were designed for rarely matches how they are actually used in practice. Floors that appear busy at isolated moments often operate at low average occupancy across the working week, revealing structural headroom that would otherwise remain invisible. Meeting rooms can feel “in demand” while being used by far fewer people than they were designed to accommodate. Desk supply can also exceed measured occupancy, even in hybrid-sensitive environments.
Within the 8,970 ft² analysed in the Anaesthesia department, 5,850 ft² was consistently underutilised, while only 3,120 ft² showed sustained occupancy. In other words, nearly two-thirds of the space was being heated, cooled and maintained without supporting regular day to day activity.
This insight was not drawn from headcount or booking systems. It was measured through observed occupancy behaviour over defined time periods. Average utilisation in the Anaesthesia department was 12.2%, while peak utilisation reached only 17.6%. In practical terms, even at the busiest observed point, fewer than one in five work points were in use at the same time.
Meeting room behaviour reinforced the same story. In a meeting room, designed for 24 people, full capacity was reached just 9% of the time, with the majority of sessions involving six people or fewer. In smaller rooms, between 88% and 94% of observed use involved just one or two occupants, indicating that many rooms were larger than typical demand required.
How analytics unlock decisions
For estates and facilities teams, this type of evidence is compelling because it connects square footage to behaviour. When room size and configuration no longer align with actual behaviour, the business case shifts from reduction to optimisation. Rooms designed for larger groups can be subdivided, converted to focus rooms or reconfigured to support collaborative work more effectively.
Another crucial insight from this project was that different parts of the estate behave very differently. While Anaesthesia averaged 12.2% utilisation and peaked at 17.6%, the Pathology department averaged 40.5% utilisation and reached a peak of 49.9%.
This contrast is important because estate decisions cannot rely on portfolio-wide averages. One department carried substantial surplus capacity, while another was operating much closer to genuine demand.
This difference allows estates teams to take a more targeted approach: greater optimisation where demand is low, while preserving capacity in areas where utilisation is materially higher.
Within the first deployment period, this level of clarity enabled the medical centre to identify specific floors and zones for modelling, to prioritise low-risk areas for intervention and to move forward with evidence-backed recommendations rather than portfolio-wide assumptions.
How utilisation strengthens the business case
In this first phase alone, 5,850 ft² of space in a single department was identified as persistently underutilised, alongside occupancy levels that remained low even at peak periods.
When average utilisation sits at 12.2% and peak demand does not exceed 17.6%, estates teams can model options with far greater confidence. In some low-demand zones, this can support more ambitious ratios such as 3:1 or 4:1, while leaving higher demand departments unchanged.
When this level of insight is replicated across a wider portfolio, the impact becomes strategically significant, because it enables estate teams to target interventions where the opportunity is clearest and the operational risk lowest.
At a time when healthcare estates are under pressure to reduce operational cost, energy demand and capital exposure simultaneously, that level of clarity becomes increasingly valuable.
This is not about cutting space indiscriminately. It is about aligning provision with a real pattern of use, protecting peak demand where it genuinely exists and releasing capacity where it does not. In an environment where every square foot carries cost, energy demand and opportunity implications, that alignment becomes critical.
The future of estates planning is not about collecting more data. It is about using the right data to make better decisions with confidence. Utilisation analytics does not make the decision for you, but it does something just as important: it removes the uncertainty around it. When leaders can see clearly how space is actually used, consolidation stops being a gamble and becomes an evidence backed choice.
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