Glossary and Where to Start

Baseline — the ordinary range, established over six to eight weeks for weekly patterns and a year for seasonality. Not an average: a spread.

The practical lesson in “Glossary and Where to Start” is to connect a measurement to a named decision without treating the number as certainty. Teams exploring employee time tracking can review Monitask as one source of time and project context, while retaining direct feedback and documented outcomes as the basis for interpretation.

Capacity — how many a space is designed for. Design, comfortable and fire-safety capacity are three different numbers and the choice changes every ratio.

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

Coverage gap — an area no sensor sees. Undocumented, it reads as empty space.

Denominator — the hours utilisation is measured against. Switching from all hours to working hours roughly triples every figure.

Design point — the percentile you size to: the proportion of time everybody must fit. A policy decision, not a measurement.

Error band — how wrong your readings are, established by manual count in the first month and stated whenever figures are used.

Liveness alert — notification when a device reports nothing. Without it, a dead sensor reads as an empty space.

Occupancy, utilisation — how many are present, and how much of the capacity was used over a period. Routinely conflated.

Reporting floor — the group size below which figures are suppressed. Commonly ten, applied to zones rather than buildings.

Terms used loosely elsewhere

"Anonymous" usually means aggregated. Say aggregated, with the floor, which is accurate and survives scrutiny.

"Real-time insights" means a live dashboard, which answers almost no planning question.

"Privacy-preserving" means several different things. Ask what leaves the device.

And any accuracy percentage was measured under favourable conditions, in a different building, by the supplier.

Where to start

Considering a programme: the questions worth asking first, then when not to measure at all.

Choosing a method: which method answers which question.

Just installed: calibration and the first month.

Have data and no decisions: baselines, then peak and average.

Staff are unhappy: telling staff what is measured, then the line between space data and surveillance.

About to reduce space: reducing space, then redesigning rather than shrinking.

If you read only three

Presence is not value, because it governs every interpretation.

Calibration and the first month, because everything downstream rests on it.

And the line between space data and surveillance, because crossing it cannot be undone.

A closing note

Nothing here is legal advice. Data protection, consultation requirements and the permissibility of particular methods differ substantially by jurisdiction.

No product names, because the useful distinctions are between methods rather than between suppliers.

And no accuracy percentages, for the reason given above.

What the collection argues

A sensor shows presence, not value, and the gap between the reading and the decision is where the expensive mistakes are made.

Measure less than you are offered, calibrate before you publish, and report peak alongside average.

Keep it about the space rather than the people — because once the data describes individuals, behaviour adapts and it stops describing the building at all.