Taxonomy Spatial Benchmarking

Demand evidence is half the equation; strategy requires the supply side in the same resolution. Taxonomy Spatial Benchmarking codes the existing workplace into a consistent typology — settings, capacities, ratios, enclosure, ecosystems, adjacencies — and holds it against demand evidence. The output is the gap structure: where supply over-provides, under-provides or mis-provides. Without it, Define negotiates ambitions against an uncharacterised asset, and every later spatial model inherits the vagueness.

• During Diagnose, once floor plans and space data are validated and occupancy measurement is underway
• Before Taxonomy Alignment in Define, which converts this baseline into future spatial demand
• In portfolio decisions, applied per building to enable like-for-like comparison
• When an existing programme of requirements needs testing against evidence rather than precedent

• Workplace strategist and spatial analyst leading the coding
• FM validating the inventory against operational reality
• CRE providing building constraints, lease terms and portfolio context
• Architect or designer where building-capability questions arise

• Validated floor plans and space schedules from Data Requests
• Occupancy Assessment baseline per setting type
• Demand evidence: Dynamics activity profiles, Business Needs adjacency and confidentiality requirements
• Existing spatial standards and programme of requirements
• Building information: floorplate geometry, structural constraints, services capacity, accessibility

1. Code the full workplace inventory into a consistent taxonomy of setting types: individual and focus settings, team settings, the meeting ecosystem by size and enclosure, collaboration, social, hospitality, support and specialist spaces.
2. Quantify the supply structure: desk capacity, sharing ratios as currently operated, density, enclosure ratio, meeting-seat-to-person ratios, focus and social ecosystem provision.
3. Map adjacencies and zoning as-built: what sits next to what, which functions hold which floors, where customer-facing and secure zones sit.
4. Assess against current demand: overlay occupancy performance and reported demand per setting type to classify each as over-provided, under-provided, mis-provided or performing.
5. Assess against intended demand: hold the same supply against the vision framework's directional ambitions — the forward gap, kept explicitly separate from the current gap.
6. Document building constraints that bound future options: floorplate depth, cores, services, acoustic separation capability, accessibility compliance.
7. Benchmark ratios against relevant external references where they exist — as context, never as targets.
8. Produce the supply–demand gap structure per setting type and per building.

• Enclosure deficits against measured focus demand — the most common structural gap in open-plan legacies
• Meeting ecosystems skewed large while measured meeting sizes skew small
• Nominal sharing ratios contradicted by operated reality (assigned desks in an officially shared model)
• Building constraints that quietly rule out the emerging ambition — better discovered now than in Develop
• Benchmark seduction: ratios imported from other organisations presented as evidence about this one

• Coded spatial inventory in a consistent setting taxonomy
• Supply performance analysis per setting type (over / under / mis-provided / performing)
• Current-gap and forward-gap structure
• Building constraint register
• Baseline ratios: capacity, sharing, density, enclosure, meeting and focus ecosystems

This baseline is the supply-side input to Taxonomy Alignment, where selected priorities become future spatial demand. The gap structure frames Workshop III's option comparison. Constraint registers bound Stacking and Blocking and Architectural Guidance. Baseline ratios anchor Sharing Ratio and Calibration. In Recalibrate, the Spatial Performance Review re-runs this assessment against the delivered workplace.

Coding space is mechanical; classifying performance is not. Whether an under-used social space is over-provision or mis-design, and whether a benchmark deviation is a problem or a legitimate organisational signature, requires reading supply data against demand context. The platform maintains the model; the strategist rules on what the gaps mean.

• Benchmarking against industry ratios instead of against this organisation's measured demand
• Coding the space as designed rather than as operated
• Merging the current gap and the forward gap into one number, hiding the change component
• Ignoring building constraints until Develop, when they invalidate the concept
• Treating the taxonomy as static — supply structure is a living model, which is precisely what the platform keeps regenerable

A bank's 22,000 m² headquarters coded out at 61% individual open desks, 8% enclosed focus settings and a meeting ecosystem where 70% of seats sat in rooms for eight or more. Demand evidence showed focus work at 45% of activity time and median meeting size of three. The gap structure — massive mis-provision rather than under-supply — reframed the project from 'we need more space' to redistribution within the existing footprint, changing the capital conversation entirely.