What is space planning?

Space planning is the optimization of an office area, maximizing the available space to suit users’ needs best. Optimal space planning focuses both on functionality and aesthetics. The space planning process is important for creating an environment that supports the organization’s operations, culture, and goals, while ensuring minimal wasted space.

The purpose of the office has transformed, and the way we occupy spaces has evolved. With the rise of the hybrid work model and flexible work, organizations need new ways to support employees. Carefully considered space planning is more important than ever before so that employees are comfortable and productive when they come into the office and so that leaders see the best possible returns on their workplace investments.

Types of space plans

There are multiple types of space planning options, all of which have advantages. What you choose depends on your employees’ needs and what organizational goals you’re striving to meet. And regardless of the type you choose, it’s important you’re employing a strategic space plan to get the most out of your workplace.

The different types of space plans include:

• Cubicle: a popular and cost-effective type of layout
• Open: a more collaborative space with little to no partitions
• Hybrid/coworking: a combination of all kinds of office layouts
• Traditional: this type typically follows a hierarchical and compartmentalized structure, reflecting organizational norms.

Key features and benefits of space planning

There are many benefits to developing a well-thought-out office space management strategy, including:

• Increased engagement and productivity
• Enhanced communication and collaboration
• Reduced organizational overhead
• Proper space planning lays the foundation for a more efficient and productive workplace culture.

Here’s a deeper dive into the core benefits.

Proactively manage and predict changing business needs

By centralizing all your data into one database, you can see the big picture, including departmental needs, types of space utilized, and identify historical patterns, as well as all associated costs. This will assist you in predicting these dynamic needs and summarize associated costs to ensure your budget remains on target for future goals. By creating what-if scenarios, you can map out moves and identify which space plan meets both organizational needs and budget.

In a Workplace Innovator podcast episode from early 2024, host Mike Petrusky spoke with Megan Riley, Global Facilities Services Systems Supervisor at STERIS, about using technology to manage facilities through data-driven decisions. She mentioned the necessity for software to handle things like space planning to reduce the need for multiple systems and to simplify data management. Importantly, she emphasized the power of the data gathered by these systems and software:

“You have that data to support you and say, here, it’s not even up to opinions anymore. Look right here, you can see this is how our employees use our space. So, let’s change our space to be better for them.” — Megan Riley, Global Facilities Services Systems Supervisor at STERIS

Using software to keep costs down

Your space planning software should help in controlling costs by tracking allocated space usage on every level. When integrated with other modules, such as asset management and facility management, you can clearly understand who is using what, when, and where. Further integration with tools such as sensors and intelligence building-performance systems, offers additional control over business expenses and identify usage trends.

Increasing return on investment (ROI)

Investing in smart technologies has a proven track record of success.

Dr. Matthew Marson from JLL Technologies discussed how organizations can achieve ROI when integrating smart technologies. According to his research, he estimates that for every $1 invested in smart building technology, companies get $3 in return over five years.

Simply put, investing in smart technology is a no-brainer.

Here are three examples of the impressive ROI boosters that smart technology can help you deliver:

1. Energy conservation

Energy costs worldwide have been on the rise. Geopolitical events and market speculation have been the main drivers of energy price increases since 2021. The International Energy Agency (IEA) used in-depth statistics on historical energy prices to predict the rising costs of energy around the world.

While there are plenty of non-digital ways to improve energy efficiency — updating old insulation, installing double-pane windows, and replacing incandescent light bulbs with LED bulbs, for example — there are also several cutting-edge smart methods for saving energy, including:

• Thermostats that adjust the office temperature based on outside weather conditions and seasonal changes so the workplace isn’t being heated when it’s an uncharacteristic hot in winter
• Blinds that change how much of a window is covered based on its location on the building as well as the time of day and season
• Lighting systems that incorporate occupancy sensors to ensure the lights are only on in areas where and when required
• Security systems set to send cellphone alerts to workplace staff and leaders

2. Better facility security

According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, a burglary occurs every 12 seconds. And the total property and personal loss is an estimated $3.1 billion annually. Even a basic security system can be a deterrent for burglars.

With a smart security system, workplace leaders can have alerts automatically sent directly to their smartphone if the system detects a problem. They can also access security camera feeds to determine if what triggered the alarm is an actual threat, preventing the expensive, unnecessary calls to the police.

3. Increased visibility into operations

Among the primary responsibilities of a workplace leader is identifying opportunities to improve efficiency. And to identify those opportunities, they need visibility into factors such as energy consumption and space utilization at every level — from floors to buildings to the entire real estate portfolio.

Smart lighting products and smart water meters can self-measure and report on electricity and water consumption. With this information, workplace leaders can establish benchmarks for the volume of each resource their facilities use. They can monitor utilization trends, and if they determine there are certain areas of a building or building systems that are using an excessive amount of electricity or water, they can make the necessary changes.

Similarly, smart occupancy sensors enable workplace leaders to track how and when employees are using spaces. Visibility into space utilization helps workplace leaders identify opportunities for space consolidation or places where a redesign could benefit workforce productivity. For example, if a smart sensor shows a workplace leader that only half the workspace is occupied at any time, they can implement a hot-desking system to reduce the costs associated with maintaining unnecessary assets and equipment.

Space planning considerations

Office occupancy needs

Before you start a space planning strategy, you need an accurate estimate of your occupancy needs. That means you’ll need to answer some questions that may not be obvious, including:

• What percentage of your workforce plans to return to the office more?
• What size groups of people need to meet at the same time?
• What do you anticipate your peak occupancy will be during the week?
• What about your average occupancy?

Employee surveys can be a good place to start, but you’ll also need to monitor occupancy trends. Occupancy sensors give you the most accurate picture of how many employees are in the office and how they use the available space.

You might find your office occupancy peaks during the early afternoon, when employees meet with clients, but tapers off later in the day. Knowing this, you may want to consider scheduling internal team meetings earlier when there’s less demand for conference rooms.

Work schedules

In a hybrid workplace, employees spend some of their time working in the office and some of their time working remotely. Your leadership team may choose to put guardrails around your hybrid policy — such as requiring employees to be present for certain types of meetings or on certain days — or leave it to employees to decide what works best for them.

Space planning strategies should consider office occupancy needs through data or employee surveys. They should also consider work schedules and how employees choose to use the office space.

In a flexible workplace, employees can choose not only where they work, but when they work. Again, your team may set parameters, but some employees may choose to start their day at 7:30am and end at 3:30pm so they can be available to take their kids to after-school activities. Other employees may start their day later and choose to focus on heads-down work in the evenings when they are most productive.

Any space planning strategy should consider these factors.

Physical needs of your office space

The way your employees plan to use your office will also influence space planning considerations, including your floor plan and furniture.

This is a good time to rethink the purpose of your office. Do you plan to prioritize in-person training, team-building events, or conferences? Perhaps your client meetings will take place in the office, but larger events will be at an off-site conference center where you can accommodate more employees who will be traveling from out of town. The way you plan your office space can improve the employee and visitor experience.

As you plan your office space, it’s also important to consider how it contributes to employee health and wellness. Enhanced ventilation, ideal temperature and humidity, and access to natural light are all factors that can make the difference between employees feeling well throughout the day or going home with headaches or eye strain.

In fact, the World Green Building Council reported that 69% of businesses that implemented healthy building features saw improvements in employee satisfaction and engagement.

Even the simple but strategic addition of plants and other natural elements can create a calm aesthetic that improves moods and mindsets for employees in the office.

Space forecasting data and technology

An effective space planning strategy not only optimizes space utilization today; it also makes it easier to forecast future needs.

Think about your company’s long-term objectives and how your office will support them. For instance:

• Are you planning to expand into new markets or lines of business?
• How will those goals impact each department?
• How will you keep your company culture strong as you grow?
• What data do you need to develop an accurate forecast?
• How do you plan to monitor space utilization?

Once you’ve outlined your goals, you’ll need to determine exactly how they will impact growth for each department or floor. Eptura Workplace’s space forecasting feature makes it easy to see how growth in specific departments will impact your future space needs.

Once you have determined your anticipated growth, you can plan and manage office moves using move management software.

Rather than rearranging desks through trial and error, you can create new floor plans and scenarios before you move a single piece of furniture.

Space planning strategies

Developing a successful strategy involves careful planning, data gathering, analysis, and forecasting. It requires a deep understanding of the enterprises’ critical values, with future goals in mind.

Identify your goals

As with everything in business, your space strategy will evolve as influencing factors arise and enterprise goals are met. Before you begin tackling the space itself, take some time to identify and understand organizational goals and where the workspace fits with regards to achieving these objectives. Whether you are just starting out with your space strategy, or are redesigning your current one, this is a critical step.

Plan your space around your workforce’s needs

Once you have your goals, it’s time to gather data on your workforce. Again, whether you’re building a space strategy from the ground up or reevaluating your current one, you should address these factors consistently. Even if your enterprise doesn’t have a high churn rate, the needs of your workforce are dynamic. How you manage them dictates success moving forward.

Eptura’s Mike Petrusky, host of the Workplace Innovator podcast, discussed the importance of balance and flexibility in workplace strategies in the show’s 313th episode, especially in the current context of hybrid work. He spoke with Shape Work Life’s principal Workplace Consultant, Kursty Groves Knight, who agreed that top-down leadership and individual responsibility play crucial roles in successfully navigating the complexities of the modern workplace. Groves Knight poignantly notes:

“We are human beings in an imperfect world, and we will make mistakes. So, there’s trying to find the balance with appropriate experiments or risk that we’re taking and then building in feedback loops, which is where I think the real solution for moving forward is.” — Kursty Groves Knight, Workplace Consultant for Shape Work Life

Aligning needs with tools

Remember, the needs of your workforce should align with the tools or software you are going to make available. And you should be deciding on tools which are not only beneficial currently, but also extend themselves to successful growth and productivity. For many businesses, the saying is true that “you’re only as good as your tools.” Your business tools are what bring everything together. With so many moving pieces to consider, it’s in solutions that improve procedural efficiency and are easily integrable. By doing so, you foster organizational collaboration and ensure business decisions are made based on the most relevant information. Your integrated workplace management system (IWMS) is the tool that brings it all together.

You’re only as good as your tools.

Space planning trends

Innovative office space planning involves paying attention to the type of materials you purchase to make the office space flexible. Flooring, for example, can be a key element in creating acoustics to aid, not detract from, work. Materials such as tiles with inherent acoustic properties or carpet with noise-reducing cushion can play a part in helping the functionality of a space filling multiple roles.

Another recommendation is to use the physical space design to give employees a feeling of empowerment. You can achieve this through unassigned desks, lounge-style seating in common areas rather than conference rooms, and rooms sectioned with flooring and furniture to create specific-use areas where employees can choose where they work based on the task.

Creating sustainable spaces

Today’s consumers increasingly expect the companies they buy from to demonstrate a commitment to protecting the environment by reducing their carbon footprint and waste.

Building sensors, connected lighting, and the Internet of Things (IoT) are allowing facility managers, corporate real estate leaders and others to take building sustainability to a new level. But it’s not enough to simply state a commitment to the environment in your mission statement.

Sustainability must be built into your business objectives and into your building plans. You also need a way to measure energy usage so you can track improvements over time.

Smart buildings with sensors have new layers of data that can be used to empower your decision-making and even help you identify energy management issues in real time, a level of energy management was unthinkable even a few years ago.

Having access to more energy management data is only half the battle, however. Business leaders need to be able to make sense of this data and respond to it promptly, recalibrating equipment and office environments as needed.

They can only do this if they have an agile platform that offers a real-time view of their workspaces and how employees use them.

An integrated workplace management system (IWMS) delivers this, combining space management, asset management, and analytics for a holistic perspective.

Space planning resources

A solid space planning strategy rests on the foundation of accurate building data and space classification standards.

When everyone in your organization relies on this data to make critical decisions — like whether to lease a new office building — it’s important that everyone is using the same calculations to arrive at their conclusions.

Knowing these three common space classification standards can help you improve your space planning strategy.

The Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) Standard

Since 1915, the Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) Standard has offered guidelines for calculating square footage in office buildings.

The goal of this American National Standards Institute (ANSI)-approved methodology is to allow consistent property valuation for leasing and purchasing, regardless of building architecture or geographic location.

Appraisers, architects, building owners, leasing professionals, facility managers, tenants, and space planners all use the BOMA Standard.

It has been updated eight times since its inception, most recently in 2017.

The latest BOMA office standard includes updates on:

• Outdoor balconies, covered galleries, and finished rooftops as rentable square footage, provided they are used exclusively by tenants
• Public pedestrian thoroughfare boundary condition to eliminate additional square footage that some ground-level spaces had under the previous standard
• Major vertical penetrations at the lowest level so openings in the floor, such as stairs or elevators, are not part of the rentable area
• Capped load factor on a tenant-by-tenant basis, which gives landlords the flexibility to attract tenants who want more collaborative office designs and amenities

Even if you aren’t a building owner, the BOMA Standard can help you with space planning by offering guidelines for accurate space measurements.

Forgetting to account for unusable spaces like elevators or stairwells may not seem like a big problem, but if you were counting on that square footage to fit additional desks or conference rooms, you’re going to be struggling to make up for it later.

International Facility Management Association (IFMA) Area Measurement Standards

The International Facility Management Association (IFMA) introduced its first Area Measurement Standard in 1995 and provides an authoritative process for measuring and classifying floor space in buildings.

It’s designed to support strategic space planning by allowing facilities managers to benchmark their buildings against others.

FMs can also use the IFMA standard to classify areas for internal purposes, such as evaluating cost-effectiveness and performance.

While the BOMA and IFMA space classification standards were developed with similar goals, there are some differences. IFMA recognizes the ASTM Standard Classification for Building Floor Area Measurements, while BOMA uses the ANSI methodology. And while BOMA included common areas in its floor space measurements, IFMA did not.

More recently, however, both organizations developed a unified definition for floor area measurements, making it easier for facilities managers to compare their office spaces against others that used a different space classification standard.

Open Standards Consortium for Real Estate (OSCRE) Industry Data Model

OSCRE International is a nonprofit organization focused on developing real estate information standards. In August 2020, OSCRE announced it would begin providing free access to its Industry Data Model (IDM), a tool designed to “improve data integrity, transparency, agile response time, and enable better insights to inform better outcomes.”

While the BOMA and IFMA standards focus on accurately measuring space, the goal of the IDM is to support digital transformation through data standardization.

The IDM represents a collaboration between property owners, occupiers, and investors as well as service providers, software companies, and other stakeholders in the real estate industry.

It supports several other corporate real estate functions in addition to space management. This includes business requirements, strategic planning, financial planning, and architecture and engineering design.

With OSCRE’s IDM, you can review more than 130 different use cases and determine the best space planning strategy for your organization. That may include expanding or decreasing your real estate footprint, improving energy efficiency and sustainability, and optimizing maintenance and facilities management.

Effective, efficient, and strategic space planning can be daunting, but the right tools help eliminate any hurdles. Make your space work harder with integrated space planning tools to help you plan better and make informed decisions with Eptura’s space planning software.