The population of a building is rarely 100 percent, thus measuring the average occupancy is a surefire way to save money.
By Bill Maliff, vice president
Imagine you’re at a restaurant. You scan the menu selection and decide on the grilled halibut, only to learn that the restaurant has sold out of that particular item. Disappointed as we may be when something like this happens, we take it in stride as the restaurant can’t possibly know how many people will order a particular menu item on any given night. While a restaurant does its best to estimate the amount of inventory, there is no way to truly know.
This is not the same in the corporate or commercial office environment. As a facility manager, can you imagine saying to an employee or tenant “I’m sorry we are out of toilet paper today,” or “We didn’t turn on the heat because we didn’t think this many people would show up today Never!
But, because there is no way of knowing, a building owner/manager is traditionally billed for operational services based on a 365-day calendar year for areas such as cleaning, maintenance, security and utilities. Service providers are contractually obligated to operate the facility based on the premise that 100 percent of the building’s population could show up. That’s a lot of wasted halibut.
Pay for services ?.not capacity.
At C&W Services, we work with several sporting stadiums, and we staff these arenas and procure supplies based on the number of tickets sold. For example, an event with 50,000 tickets sold will require a certain level of management, security, concessions and cleaning staff for the entire pre-, during and post-event requirements. In this scenario, the venue is invoiced based on tickets sold, which is very easily calculated at the box office.
When working with an event that has sold only 15,000 tickets, an event promoter would not want to pay for the same services needed for a 50,000-seat event. Because the number of people attending the event is measurable based on tickets sold, a client can pay for the services needed for only 15,000 attendees instead of 50,000, saving them a large amount of money.
Conversely, a building owner doesn’t want to pay the cost of a 500-person office space when they know only 150 are going to show up. So, why can’t we use the same model for a ticketed event as a disruptor for office space?
Learning to measure.
Many building managers say they don’t have the luxury of knowing how many people will show up to their office, and it’s true. But while directionally accurate, enhanced technology can now predict with much greater accuracy how many people have arrived on campus on any given day.
These enhancements that include room sensors, seat sensors and badge readers, now provide us with real-time data to know how many people came to work, how long they were there and where they worked. We can also measure space usage through cleaning technologies to pinpoint the offices that were unoccupied or the conference rooms that had the most usage.
Why continue to pay for services you aren’t using?
Learn more about how C&W Services can provide a better staffing solution and what we are doing to manage occupancy expectations.
We can help you personalize the services that fit your employee trends. Contact us today to speak to one of our team members and to understand how we can create custom solutions to fit your needs and your budget.