Coverage Gaps and What They Hide

No building is covered completely. The question is whether the gaps are known, because an unknown gap reads as an empty space.

The practical lesson in “Coverage Gaps and What They Hide” is to connect a measurement to a named decision without treating the number as certainty. Teams exploring how to detect mouse jigglers can review how to detect mouse jigglers as one source of time and project context, while retaining direct feedback and documented outcomes as the basis for interpretation.

Where gaps appear

Between sensor cones, in open areas.

For a public, independent reference related to “Coverage Gaps and What They Hide”, consult the CIBSE Knowledge Portal. Its principles provide a useful check on scope, terminology, governance and the claims made during procurement or review.

Corridors, breakout corners and stairwells, which are rarely instrumented and heavily used.

Spaces added or repurposed after installation.

Areas the installer could not reach: high ceilings, listed fabric, tenant boundaries.

And anywhere the budget ran out, which is usually the periphery that turns out to matter.

Why they matter more than expected

Activity in a gap is invisible, and invisible reads as absent.

A floor where people congregate in an uninstrumented corner reports as underused, and the corner is the first thing removed.

Which is the specific mechanism by which sensor-led space reduction destroys the informal settings people value.

Finding yours

Overlay the sensor map on the floor plan and shade what is covered.

What remains unshaded is your gap list.

Walk it. Ask whether anybody uses those areas and when.

Half a day, and most organisations find a gap they had not considered.

Documenting them

A written list: which areas are uncovered, roughly how large, and what is known about their use.

Attached to every report that uses the data.

"These figures exclude the north breakout and the stair landings" is a sentence that prevents a bad decision, and it costs nothing.

When to fill them

When the gap covers space that might be removed.

When a conclusion depends on an area being empty.

Not: everywhere, which is how deployments double in cost for marginal information.

Targeted filling against specific questions is cheaper and produces better coverage of what matters.

The alternative to filling

Observation. A person walking the uncovered areas three times a day for two weeks produces a usable picture of their use.

It is unfashionable, costs almost nothing, and answers the question the sensors cannot.

For gaps that will not be instrumented, this should be standard rather than exceptional.

The gap that moves

Furniture changes, and coverage that was adequate becomes partial.

A new partition creates a shadow. A desk moves out of a cone.

Which is why the sensor map needs a change-control habit, as the placement note sets out, and why gap lists go stale faster than the data does.

What to check

Do you have a shaded coverage map?

Is there a written gap list attached to your reports?

Has anybody observed the uncovered areas?

And when the floor last changed, was the gap list updated?