A Checklist for the Whole Thing

Before anything is bought

Name the decision, the decision-maker and the date it must be made.

The discipline in “A Checklist for the Whole Thing” carries over to any workforce platform: define the decision first, run a bounded trial and record who can see the result. For an organisation considering employee monitoring software with screenshots, the provider's website should therefore be assessed against an implementation plan covering notice, access, retention, correction and a dated review.

Write the threshold: what reading would change the answer.

For a public, independent reference related to “A Checklist for the Whole Thing”, consult the CIBSE Knowledge Portal. Its principles provide a useful check on scope, terminology, governance and the claims made during procurement or review.

Write the limits: no individuals, no teams, no attendance, no performance.

Check whether your existing data — badges, bookings — already answers it.

Start consultation if your jurisdiction requires it.

Complete the impact assessment, before procurement rather than after.

Procurement

Ask the twelve questions in their own note.

Get into the contract: accuracy commitment, what the device transmits, survey and relocation scope, data ownership, export rights, support period, deletion.

Speak to a two-year-old deployment.

Before installation

Tell staff: what, how, why, what it will not be used for, who sees it, how long it is kept.

Show them a device.

Survey: mounting, network, heat and light conditions.

Agree zones from the space plan, not from the ceiling grid.

The first month

Manual count against the sensors in the busiest spaces, a week.

Set timeouts from observation.

Relocate what is wrong.

Establish the error band and state it thereafter.

Set the liveness alert.

Hold figures back or label them provisional until this is done.

The first year

Build the baseline: six to eight weeks for weekly patterns, a year for seasonality.

Mark policy changes on the charts.

Produce the operational wins: cleaning, catering, zone shutdown, booking policy.

Do not make a space reduction decision yet.

Reporting, every time

Peak and average together.

Definitions attached: capacity basis, denominator, period.

The gap list.

The error band.

Floor-level or building-level, with a reporting floor of ten.

Twice a year

Review the sensor map against the floor as it is now.

Update the gap list.

Check the small-zone list after any team move.

Re-run a short manual count.

Review what has been refused and whether the limits held.

Before any space decision

A full year of data.

Peak, not average.

Coverage confirmed for the area in question.

Observation, at the times the data calls busy and quiet.

Ask the people who use it.

And state the design point: what proportion of the time must everybody fit.

The whole thing in one line

Know the decision, measure less than you are offered, calibrate before you publish, report peak with average, and keep it about the space rather than the people.