Occupancy tracking — a practice that utilizes technology to automatically detect how many people are in a room — isn’t an entirely new concept for federal agencies.
In 2019, as FedTech has reported, analytics software and advanced meters that measured real-time utility use helped the General Services Administration identify unused space in its headquarters to house 1,000 National Capital Region office workers, freeing up the former workspace for another agency.
The State Department also deployed sensors in its domestic buildings nearly a decade ago as part of an effort that involved optimizing HVAC system use to conserve energy and make the office environment comfortable when most employees were present.
During the coronavirus pandemic, most federal employees worked remotely — just 17 percent were physically present in their agency 100 percent of the time, according to a fall 2020 Office of Personnel Management survey. As employees return to the workplace, occupancy tracking could play a role.
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Turning to Occupancy Tech for a Secure, Organized Office Return
In January, the Office of Management and Budget issued guidance that stipulated federal workplaces should function at no more than 25 percent of their normal capacity during periods of significant or high community COVID-19 transmission. That guidance is no longer in effect.
However, guidance released by the Office of Management and Budget, Office of Personnel Management and General Services Administration in mid-June states that agencies can still opt to establish occupancy limits for specific workplaces to ensure physical distancing between unvaccinated individuals.
According to an OMB spokesperson, agencies are “currently focused on developing draft plans regarding the safe re-entry of employees and onsite contractors, as well as post-re-entry personnel policies and work environments.”
The move toward a hybrid or “work anywhere” model could also increase interest in occupancy tracking, according to Andrew Hewitt, senior analyst at research firm Forrester, particularly for organizations looking to reduce or justify exiting an office lease.
“Understanding what that occupancy looks like on a daily basis is becoming really important from a cost-saving perspective,” Hewitt says. “It’s also important from a health perspective. That will start to wane over time with more vaccination and people getting more comfortable, but to some extent, it just provides a little bit more psychological safety for people who want to come into the office and feel like they’re being safe.”
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Using Tracking Tech to Measure Who and What Is Present
Occupancy monitoring can be performed with an application that checks workers in when they arrive at the office and scan a QR code, offering a basic way to view overall capacity across an entire building.
It can also encompass a more complicated but potentially more accurate method involving sensors or beacons that are placed throughout a building, Hewitt says. Sensors may be added to desks to sense if they are occupied, for instance, or in the lights to measure how many people walk down a hallway.
“That model gives you a better sense of how many people are in specific area of the building so you can prioritize and say, ‘Nobody uses this conference room; let’s close it down,’ or, ‘This is a really high-volume area. Can we shift people to another part of the organization?’” he says.