Corporate Real Estate Key Terms
A
A meeting room reservation where nobody shows up to the meeting room. Room reservations can become abandoned when meetings are cancelled or when the location for the meeting changes, and no one updates the calendar invite.
Synonyms: No-show meeting, Ghost meeting
Employees that don’t come into the workplace even when they’re expected to be physically present. Absenteeism is often caused by the dread associated with the stress-inducing distractions throughout an open workplace layout.
ABW is the practice of providing employees with a choice of workplace settings for various tasks and activities throughout the workday. ABW acknowledges that certain activities require specific locations and gives employees the freedom to choose when, where, and how they work.
Employees are assigned a permanent seat. Desk allocation is 1-to-1, with one workspace for every employee. Employees have the option to add personality to their desks and use them as a home base.
Audio visual technology is typically used for video/phone conferencing technology, a sound system or displays used through the workplace.
AV is a commonly used acronym to refer to audio/visual technology.
B
A Battery-Powered Beam Counter is a type of smart building sensor used for employee counting and facility footfall.
A type of desk often used in open workplaces. Employees share one long desk and have minimal barriers between individual workspaces.
Biophilic design is a workplace design that aims to increase employees connectivity with nature by including natural accents, such as plants, soft seating and natural light.
Typically the largest conference room in a workplace is designated for board or executive-level meetings.
A space type designed to spark creativity and collaboration. It can be used for team-wide meet-ups for a project or brainstorming, as well as smaller get-togethers for sprints that require more board space or other resources. Sometimes referred to as “project room” or “war room.”
C
Refers to tactics used to help smoothly transition a group of employees from one situation to another.
For example, when transitioning from a closed plan workplace to a flexible, activity-based working environment, you can use change management tactics like clearly outlined guidelines for behaviour and the use of workplace resources to make the transition run smoothly.
CO/ CPO refers to a traditional floor plan that divides the workplace into smaller spaces such as cubicles and enclosed private offices, with less collaborative space.
An area in the workplace where social collisions occur organically. Sites can include lounges, cafes or lobbies. Designers include areas like these in workplace design to help spark spontaneous collaboration and networking.
D
Desk hotelling is a seat assignment but with a pre-determined end date.
Desk Sensors measure whether a workstation is being occupied or not. Data is captured at regular intervals, allowing Space Planners and Managers to identify occupancy trends.
Collaborative, cloud-based tools where teams can work together remotely and asynchronously. Examples include Slack, video conferencing, Google Docs, etc.
E
An elastic workplace is a workplace environment that can fluctuate in size depending on your business needs. Normally facilitated through space providers
Event Occupancy measures the number of people attending a specific event.
F
Flexible Employees are employees who have freedom in where and when they work.
Flexible Spaces are settings throughout the workplace designed to support particular employee activities and meet the needs of different styles of work.
Flexible Working encompasses the concept of allowing employees flexibility in the workplace. Employees have the power to choose when, how and where they work. Flex spaces around the workplace are designed to meet the needs of those different styles of work and give freedom to employees to move throughout the workplace.
flexible work can include activity-based working principles, the elastic workplace, hot-desking, flex/huddle zones and more.
Can also be referred to as “agile working”
A floor plan is a detailed recording of the built environment, including interior and external walls, windows and doorways. A floor plan can also include soft elements such as furniture.
Floor plans are viewable as images, pdf’s or through specialized software. Floorplans are created and edited through computer-assisted design (CAD) and computer-assisted facility management (CAFM) software.
Synonyms: Floorplate
A Footfall Counter is an electronic device that is used to measure footfall the number of people entering and leaving a zone.
Hot desking is often referred to as free address; workspaces without assigned seating; same-day desk reservations that require employees to keep the space clean for the next employee to reserve.
H
On-demand, same-day reservable workstations, requiring people to check-in and out. Sometimes known as free address, flex-desking or hot-spot desking.
Does not allow booking in advance and reservations reset daily.
A small meeting space designed to encourage people to meet quickly and easily. Best for groups of two to six people for either scheduled or impromptu time.
Can have equipment such as a small round table with seating and AV technology.
I
Software that helps Facility Managers optimize the use of workplace resources, including managing an organization’s Corporate Real Estate portfolio, infrastructure and facilities assets.
In the workplace, IT professionals are typically responsible for maintaining and improving employee experience around computers, networking and the hardware and software accompanying each.
IT is an acronym used to refer to the field of “information technology”.
K
A display typically placed in the entrance to an office, at elevator bays or in a lobby area that contains vital information about a workplace. A kiosk can display an office map with wayfinding directions or include a real-time schedule of events occurring in the office throughout the day.
L
Live Occupancy Counting uses people counting technology to capture occupancy rates and display the data within 10 seconds of a person passing through a counting zone.
Live people counting is the tracking of people as they enter or exit a space. Spaces include common space (a hallway or corridor, meeting space or a workstation).
M
Meeting density is the percentage of meeting rooms hosting events at a given time
Mobile employees are employees who spend less than 20% of their time or 1.5 hours each day at a workstation. This lower occupancy rate makes them top candidates for unassigned seating arrangements.
N
A neighborhood is an outlined space that is dedicated for a team, department or project within the workplace.
This space contains the specific variety of spaces and equipment that team needs to do their work effectively.
O
Occupancy is a measure of the total number of people in a specific space.
Occupancy Accuracy is achieved by using overhead counters with accurate and consistent flow-rate accuracy. Occupancy accuracy can be subject to cumulative errors due to slight inaccuracies inherent in all existing people counting technologies.
The management of occupancy in a space ensuring that space occupiers are comfortable and that headcount doesn’t exceed the predefined maximum capacity.
Occupancy Tracking is monitoring and measuring the number of people in a building, floor or zone/ neighborhood.
Office White Noise is a tactic of sound masking to reduce noise levels and increase concentration.
Open plan office refers to a more modern workplace layout created to allow for more organization-wide transparency and ad-hoc collaboration amongst employees
Over-counting happens when a people counter counts more people than are passing through a space.
Over-counting occurs due to environmental conditions, insufficient configuration, or unexpected staff or customer behaviour within the counting zone.
P
The amount of people walking past a space (including cafes or other general access space, neighborhoods/ zones or meeting spaces). Data capture is useful to understand if and how spaces are being used.
The time and day that a workplace is busiest on average.
The number of people who enter into a space (at a building’s entrance, through common space or into a workstation or meeting room).
A place where people come together to work in person, whether on collaborative projects or individual ones.
A small, self-contained, soundproofed, modular space designed for privacy and concentration for one or two people.
Power over Ethernet enables people-counting devices to pass electrical power and data safely on CAT5 or CAT6 Ethernet cabling.
Due to external or internalized pressure, employees come into the office when they’re physically or mentally unwell ultimately resulting in lost productivity. This type of behavior can cause sickness or unhealthy attitudes to spread throughout the office.
Q
A Quiet Car is an area designed for focused, individual work.
R
Counting and displaying live footfall and occupancy counts within 5 seconds of a person having passed through a count-zone.
The time that is freed due to employees ghosting on bookings.
If an employee made a booking for a workspace or meeting space and doesn’t check in to the space after a period of time, the space is released back into general bookable records.
Remote Monitoring is a regularly performed service to ensure that people-counting devices are still connected to the network and are functioning as they should be.
Employees who spend more than 60% of the time at an assigned workstation or at least 5 hours each day.
Reverse Desk Hoteling is an assigned workstation that becomes usable/bookable due to the assigned employee’s scheduled absence.
A Room Display is a digital touch screen that is mounted on the exterior wall or window of a conference room or related office space.
S
Types of spaces optimized to support work and interaction. In a flexible workspace, the right mix will foster an office landscape that’s easy-to-navigate for people and provide them with variety throughout their workday.
Space Management is a sub-discipline of Facilities Management. Space Management oversees people, buildings and assets. Space Managers are responsible for the safe, efficient, consistent and comfortable deployment and management of space for users to complete their roles in.
The planning phase before undertaking a workspace move.
Staff Planning is a continuous process of shaping a staff profile to reach several people and business-oriented goals.
A Stereoscopic Video Counter is a people-counter with two lenses. The addition of another lense creates 3-dimensional vision creating an image with both depth and shape
T
Tailgating happens when one person directly follows behind another through a counting zone or security gate, and they are not counted.
A type of people counter that monitors the difference between the background temperature and the temperature of count targets as they move through the count zone.
A third space in the workplace refers to areas that fall between “home” and “workplace” on the spectrum of spaces an employee finds themselves during a normal day.
Traffic Density is the number of people who pass under a people counting device at any one time.
Traffic Patterns outlines footfall rates at different points through buildings.
A Touchdown Spot is an informal workspace. Typically used to regroup when navigating through the workspace, continue conversations when meetings run over or quickly sync up with colleagues without having to book a formal meeting space.
U
Under-counting happens when some people-counting devices count fewer people than are actually passing through a counting zone.
Utilization is a metric capturing and reporting on how often spaces are being used.
V
Venue Occupancy is a metric measuring the number of people that can safely fit inside a venue.
Video Counting is a type of technology used to count people or assets as they move through workplaces
A Visitor Counter is a device that counts the number of people entering a public venue.
W
Wayfinding platforms support building/space users to find their way in an unfamiliar environment.
A Weather Effect is the effect that weather has on footfall trends. For instance, on a rainy day, footfall may decrease at a workplace operating a flexible work culture.
Wireless People Counter is any automated people counting device that is powered and transfers data without wires or cables.
The overall physical and digital workplace experience workers have that lives in the domain of HR, IT, facilities and internal culture committees, including how well people interact with the tools and spaces provided to them.
Workplace Management is a broader part of managing premises involving planning.
Workplace Managers look to how a building, floor or space is being used and compare current usage data to expected usage.
