When a company asks to optimise the layout, it almost always thinks about reclaiming workstations. The real problem is different: the available space is distributed in the wrong proportions relative to how people work. The point is not to add desks – it is to understand where the proportions are off.
The objective baseline: BOMA measurement of the space
Every optimisation starts from the net usable area. The BOMA standard (Building Owners and Managers Association) provides the method: it separates the area that counts for use from the area that does not – columns, shafts, wall thicknesses – and returns the raw figure to work with. Without this measurement, any reasoning about the proportions between workstations and support areas remains approximate.
CORE
GEA
GIA
NLA
NIA
NOA/NUA
Understanding how people work: interviews and surveys
The area tells you how much space there is. Interviews and surveys tell you how it is used. With our typical day survey we detect – for each team – the real activity mix: how many hours of individual focused work, how much collaboration, how many calls, how much time off site. The expressed and latent needs emerge: the first stated, the second visible only by observing how the space is actually occupied. It is the same method we use to calibrate the desk sharing ratio.
Sizing the work settings against real use
By crossing BOMA area and usage data you arrive at the plan of the work settings: shared workstations, open collaboration areas, small rooms for calls and short meetings, focus zones, support areas. The proportion between these places is not an aesthetic choice: it depends on the survey figures. A company with high mobility and many calls needs a different composition from a team that works mostly in focus. ARCHIlabs' proprietary software crosses this data and balances density, comfort and activity mix before the layout takes shape. This is the point where optimisation becomes design: a space that enables the work of the people who live in it every day.