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Insight · Measurement

How much space per person in an office

5 min read

Tables of "m² per person" have been circulating for decades in specifications and real estate guides. The problem is that they measure an abstract average. Space needs per person depend on who works, how they work and for how many hours they really occupy the workstation. Calculating it requires data.

The profile before the number

Not everyone in an organisation uses space in the same way. A sales team off-site four days out of five has a radically different need from a design team working on-site every day. That is why the first step is not to define how many m² are needed, but to profile the people: through interviews and surveys we reconstruct each team's typical day – how much time is spent at the desk, how much collaboration takes place, how many calls require acoustic isolation – bringing out both stated and latent needs. The latent ones are often the most critical for the final sizing.

Work profiles compared: the distribution of activities across the typical day changes from one team to another.

BOMA as an objective basis for efficiency

Once the profiles are known, a shared measure is needed to assess the available space. The BOMA standard – with its NOA (Net Office Area), NUA (Net Usable Area) categories and the support and circulation areas – objectively separates what is actual workspace from what is building infrastructure. This distinction is the basis for assessing the real efficiency of a layout: a m² classified as circulation is not wasted space, but must be counted correctly so as not to distort the final figure for space needs per person.

GEA External gross area GIA Internal gross area NLA Net lettable area NIA Net internal area NOA/NUA Net occupied area EXTERNAL WALLS OPENINGS TOILETSINTERNAL STRUCTURES CORE MAINCIRCULATION WORK AREASSUPPORT AREAS
  1. Floor plan with the core highlighted in redCORE
  2. Floor plan with the external gross area highlightedGEA
  3. Floor plan with the internal gross area highlightedGIA
  4. Floor plan with the net lettable area highlightedNLA
  5. Floor plan with the net internal area highlightedNIA
  6. Floor plan with the net occupied area highlightedNOA/NUA
The BOMA areas: from the external gross area (GEA) to the net occupied area (NOA/NUA), separating walls, core, circulation and work/support areas.

The desk sharing ratio changes everything

The third factor is real occupancy. In an organisation with an average presence of 60%, every assigned fixed workstation is used little more than half the time. Applying a correct desk sharing ratio – derived from attendance data, not from an estimate – makes it possible to reduce physical workstations and reinvest those m² in high-rotation work settings: collaboration areas, concentration spaces, support areas that the survey has identified as lacking. The final result – m² per person – is the sum of all these levels.

The desk sharing ratio depends on the profile: the more time spent off-site, the higher the people-to-workstation ratio.

The m²/person figure is not a universal value: our proprietary software translates the work profiles gathered by the survey – activities, times and modes of presence – into the specific floor area and work settings of that organisation.

What are your organisation's real needs?

Our survey captures the typical day and the work profiles in a few minutes. It is the starting point for calculating space per person on real data – and for understanding where to reinvest the recovered m².

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