For many, the term ‘analytics’ will make them think of the tracking of people’s use of websites, social media and the like. Now, however, it’s becoming possible to create analytics around people’s use of office space – and then interpret that data to improve layouts, or increase wellbeing and productivity.
This Week in FM reported that global engineering and consultancy company BuroHappold are devloping a workplace analytics system with “the potential to revolutionise how commercial office space is planned, used and monitored”.
Of course, as ever in these times of ‘big data’, it’s not the stats and analytics themselves that matter… it’s what you do with them that counts. And measurement of how people are using a space today does not immediately determine how that space should be configured tomorrow.
At Procol, our years of experience of office design, space planning and refurbishment are pivotal to enabling us to create optimised layouts that meet clients’ goals around productivity, communication and interaction, wellbeing or some other factor. However, we welcome the advent of systems delivering data that we can use to add another dimension or additional depth to the knowledge and expertise that underpins our solutions.
And – as is promised by the system BuroHappold are developing – the facility to quickly test different scenarios, and gauge which produces the best outcomes, is also a highly useful feature.
Whether workplace analytics will “revolutionise” office design and space planning remains to be seen. But at Procol they will certainly help evolve it in a way that augments the rigourous, creative and – dare we say – analytical approach we already take!