Who’s back in the office?

In the COVID 20s, this is among the critical questions that organizations must answer as employees can return to work. The answer allows the organization to reconfigure and right-size their office space for better space efficiency, improve employee experience, and reduce costs for energy and cleaning services. One company’s solution uses small, affordable occupancy sensors combined with cloud-based facility management software. In fact, Planon Quickstart for Desk Occupancy Insights is a combined hardware and software proposition in partnership with Disruptive Technologies, the developer of the world’s smallest wireless sensors.

The desk occupancy product has a detailed installation guide and a custom-designed onboarding app. These enable the installation of sensors and cloud connectors within hours. Then Planon experts set up the Planon Workplace Insights environment and onboard the facility’s floorplans. This simple process allows facility managers, employers and other organizations to be monitoring in one day.

The small, wireless sensors from Disruptive Technologies include humidity, temperature, water detection, door status, asset temperature, and remote monitoring of buildings and assets.

For example, the wireless proximity sensor in its 19 mm x 19 mm x 2.5 mm IP68 package has end to end encryption for transmitted data and a 15-year battery life at room temperature. Adhesive backing allows the sensor to be attached to the desired location and detect objects that are removed or placed in front it. In addition to transmitting periodic heartbeats every 15 minutes to show it is working, the sensor transmits a message when an object is removed or placed in front of the sensor. It does not measure the distance to an object – it only measures and indicates if an object is present or not within 5 mm. The sensor communicates with its 915 MHz ISM band, SecureDataShot communications protocol in the U.S.