Booked is not the same as used
Most organizations size their space from three numbers: headcount, the lease and the room-booking calendar. None of them measures use. Booked rooms sit empty when meetings move online. Assigned desks stay dark three days a week. Meanwhile the four-person huddle rooms are full all day and people take calls in the stairwell.
The question to settle is whether, and how, to measure real space use before your next space decision: a lease renewal, a consolidation, a cleaning contract or an HVAC schedule.
Occupancy, vacancy and utilization are different things
These words get used interchangeably, and that leads to bad conclusions. We define them at the start of every engagement:
| Term | What it measures | Typical source | Good for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Occupancy (presence) | Whether anyone is in a zone, yes or no | Lighting occupancy sensors | “Is this room ever used?” and HVAC setback |
| Vacancy | How long a space sits empty | The same sensors, read the other way | Skipping cleaning, after-hours sweeps |
| Headcount | How many people are present | Dedicated people counters | Meeting-room sizing, cafe and lobby capacity |
| Utilization | Use relative to capacity, over time | Presence or counts, plus a space inventory | Lease and layout decisions |
In lighting, “vacancy” also names a sensor mode: manual on, automatic off. In analytics we use it for empty time, and the definitions sheet says so.
A room can be occupied most of the day and still be poorly utilized, if a twelve-seat room hosts one person on calls. That’s the finding that changes leases, and presence data alone can’t see it.
Your lighting sensors are a head start, with a bias
If you have networked lighting controls, there’s already an occupancy sensor in most rooms. That data is effectively free, and we use it first. It has one known bias: lighting sensors hold the lights on for a time delay after the last motion. With a 15-minute delay, a two-minute visit reads as a 17-minute meeting. We correct for this by working from sensor events rather than light state wherever the platform exposes them, and by checking against manual counts in sample rooms.
Where you need headcount, we add dedicated counters only in the spaces that matter for the decision, such as meeting rooms, collaboration areas and entrances, rather than covering the whole building.
Privacy, stated plainly
Occupancy data is about people, so we treat it carefully even when it’s anonymous:
- No cameras by default. We use thermal, time-of-flight or radar counters that report numbers, not images.
- No individual tracking. We don’t collect badge IDs, phone identifiers or Wi-Fi addresses.
- Aggregated by space and time. Reports show rooms and hours, never people.
- Written down. Each deployment gets a short privacy statement your HR and legal teams can review before anything is installed.
What you do with it
- Right-size the lease. Utilization by floor and space type, measured over normal weeks, shows how much space you’d keep if you renewed tomorrow. Bring it to the negotiation, not after it.
- Clean what was used. Vacancy data lets crews skip rooms nobody entered and spend the time on the ones that were busy.
- Condition what’s occupied. The same presence data drives occupied-standby HVAC setback through BMS integration.
- Fix the mix. If huddle rooms are full and boardrooms are empty, the answer is a construction drawing, not a booking policy.
How it’s delivered
Data flows into the Ledger Space module of Lytbit Ledger, where you can view utilization by space type, floor, hour and weekday, and export it as CSV, through the API or over MQTT. If you’re adding new sensors, see IoT integration. If you’re planning a PoE lighting project, its sensors can feed the same layer from the first day.
