Workplace glossary.

Opening only the floors you need each day, based on that weekday’s footfall. Closed floors aren’t heated or cooled, lit or cleaned.

Giving a booked room back to the calendar when it isn’t used: if nobody arrives within a few minutes, or if the group leaves early. With Meet, after 10 minutes with nobody in, the room is free again.

Confirming that a meeting has started without anyone tapping a button: a sensor detects that the group has walked into the room. It’s what Meet does when the room has a sensor.

Occupancy averaged over the working day or week. It’s useful for trends but not for sizing: it includes the first and last hours, when almost nobody is in, and makes the office look emptier than it is at the peak.

The system that controls a building’s heating, cooling, ventilation and lighting. If it knows when a space empties, it can relax the setpoint and dim the lights. Orpheus tells it by API.

Computerised maintenance management software: where work orders are opened and tracked. When a zone goes out of range, Orpheus can open the order in the CMMS by API.

The CO₂ we breathe out builds up when there are many people and little ventilation, so it’s the best indicator of whether a space is well ventilated. It rises with occupancy: a full room with the door shut shows it straight away.

In Orpheus, the share of the people in the building who are in zones within your range for temperature, air and noise. If there are 100 people and 97 are in zones within range, it reads 97%. An empty room doesn’t count: it counts people, not square metres.

How it’s calculatedPeople in zones within range ÷ people in the building × 100

The function that decides a company’s property portfolio: which sites to keep, how much space, buy or lease, renegotiate or exit. It needs real usage data to defend each decision.

What each desk in the office costs a month: rent, cleaning and energy, split across the desks. With 2,400 m² at €28.4/m² and 240 desks, about €280 a month. Work out yours.

How it’s calculatedMonthly space cost ÷ desks

What each person who uses the office really costs: the space cost split only across the people who come in. If 14% come in on Friday, each person costs about seven times what the plan says. Calculator.

How it’s calculatedMonthly space cost ÷ people who come in

How much floor space there is per desk or per person, usually in m² per desk. It helps compare floors and sites, and shows how much space each removed desk frees up.

How it’s calculatedUsable m² ÷ desks

A model where desks don’t belong to anyone: anyone can use any of them. It lets an office have fewer desks than people, as long as there’s room at the peak for everyone who comes in.

How many desks there are for each person with access to the office. A ratio of 0.7 means seven desks for every ten people. It’s set from real peak occupancy plus a margin for peak days. How to decide it.

How it’s calculatedDesks ÷ people with access

Running the building day to day: maintenance, cleaning, security, heating and cooling, and services such as the canteen. It’s the team that notices first when the space doesn’t fit the people.

A room booked in the calendar that nobody walks into, or that the group leaves long before the end. The room looks taken and nobody else can use it. Why it happens and how to stop it.

Shared desks without booking: first come, first served. With advance booking it’s usually called desk booking. Either way, what tells you whether it works is real occupancy, not bookings.

A model where people split their week between the office and other places. It makes occupancy swing a lot by day: in the average Orpheus building, from 64% on the busiest day to 14% on Friday.

How clean and fresh the air in a space is. It’s tracked through CO₂, volatile organic compounds (VOC), particulate matter and humidity. It affects comfort, focus and health.

A long-range, very low-power radio network built for sensors. It lets sensors run for years on batteries and send their data to a receiver without touching the office wifi or network. Orpheus’ sensors use it to reach the Hub, which goes out over the mobile network.

A booking (of a room or a desk) that nobody turns up for. It’s the most common cause of ghost meetings.

The share of desks (or of a space’s capacity) in use at a given moment. It’s best measured at each day’s peak rather than as an average. How to measure it.

How it’s calculatedPeople present ÷ available desks × 100

A device that detects whether a space is in use or counts how many people are in it. There are presence sensors (yes or no) and people counters (how many). Types and how to choose.

Occupancy at the busiest moment of the day or week. It’s the figure to size an office with: if there’s room at the peak, there’s room all the time. In the average Orpheus building (hybrid-working clients, before acting), the busiest day reaches 64%.

A sensor that tells you how many people are in a zone or room, not just whether anyone is there. Orpheus’ CountSensor goes on the ceiling, covers up to 70 m² and counts with AI inside the device itself: it doesn’t store or send images, only numbers.

A small soundproof booth for one person’s calls or video calls. Hybrid offices often don’t have enough: many large rooms end up used by one person on a call.

A detector that senses movement through infrared. It tells you whether someone is there but not how many, and it can miss a person who stays still for a long time. It’s cheap and battery-powered.

Feeling right with a space’s temperature and humidity, neither cold nor hot. It also depends on how many people are in: a full room warms up. It’s the most common complaint in offices.

How much of a space’s potential is actually used: for how long and by how many people. An eight-seat room taken all morning by two people has high occupancy and low utilisation.

How it’s calculatedPeople in the room ÷ room seats × 100

Two standards about building health. WELL certifies how a building looks after the people using it (air, light and comfort, among others); RESET Air focuses on monitoring air quality continuously. Orpheus’ WellSensor meets their measurement requirements.

In Real Estate and Facilities, the physical office and the team that runs it: spaces, services and the experience of the people working there. In IT, “workplace” or “digital workplace” sometimes means the digital desk (the laptop, Microsoft 365). Orpheus works with the first.