The occupancy blind spot: why space decisions are still made on the plan, not the reality

In one UK university's own survey, 44% of timetabled hours saw an empty room. In the same week, more than a quarter of the hours in which rooms were in use had no booking at all. The plan was wrong in both directions.

Most buildings are still managed from a half-complete version of the truth. Timetables, booking systems, floorplans, and capacity assumptions describe how a building is supposed to be used. They don't describe how people actually use it. That gap matters when estates teams decide which spaces to keep, consolidate, or refurbish, where to invest, and how much energy goes into conditioning rooms that may be empty.

This session tests the plan against reality using two sources. Universities' own space utilisation surveys, released under the Freedom of Information Act, produced by whatever method each institution used: clipboard headcounts, timetable analysis, Wi-Fi and sensor data. And continuous sensor data from live university deployments, hour by hour, set against the bookings for the same rooms.

Where a figure comes from the timetable, teaching rooms appear 65% to 75% full when in use. Where an actual count is available, the same rooms are 22% to 48% full. Institutions surveying twice a year saw their headline figure swing by eight points between waves. Others have stopped surveying because counting cost more than it was worth, and now report timetable-derived figures as it’s all they have.

The same questions apply to any large estate. Are decisions made on how people are expected to use the building, or on how they actually use it? Is the evidence a week's sample or a continuous record? And who, if anyone, is counting?

Delegates will leave with three tests to apply to their own occupancy data, the headline figures from the research, and a view of what continuous, privacy-first occupancy counting adds alongside booking systems and other building data.