The use of occupancy analytics has been a rising trend for buildings in recent years, driving productivity by helping enterprises balance occupant health and comfort with occupant density. As we come to terms with the return to the office being a stop-start process, applying occupancy levels in line with public health guidelines, we begin to realize that occupancy analytics is set up to limit density for health and comfort, while driving productivity. We have moved from ‘how to get the best out of your building’ to ‘how to get the best out of your building at 30%, 50%, or 75% occupancy’.

Our 2020 report on the Occupancy Analytics & In-Building Location Based Services market estimated system sales of $2.17 Billion in 2019, rising to $5.73 Billion by 2024, growing at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 21.5%. Since then, every industry and almost every building has been impacted, many workplaces have not seen staff since March. After the initial attention on remote work, enterprises are now focused on how to get their employees back safely, comfortably, and productively, which is creating more interest in the occupancy analytics market.

One of the big new entrants trying to find their way into the space is Sidewalk Labs, the smart cities arm of Google’s parent company Alphabet. The firm has been relatively quiet since it was forced to shut down its Toronto Quayside development project due to rising public resistance to the project’s privacy policies. Last week, the firm announced its new commercial building kit called Mesa, which promises to reduce electricity costs by 20%, improve tenant comfort, and enable real-time visibility through its pre-commissioned plug-and-play product suite.

Other firms don’t have the same limitations and are continuing to show the undeniable power of cameras within a broad sensor ecosystem. On September 15th, four year old startup Verkada announced a new set of environmental sensors, that combine with their cloud-based surveillance and access control infrastructure to give customers even greater insight into building conditions. The evolution is a result of an $80 million Series C funding round in January this year, adding to $60 million from previous rounds and giving the company a $1.6 billion valuation.

“What we do today is cameras and access control — cameras, of course, provide the eyes and the view into building in spaces, while access control controls how you get in and out of these spaces,” said Verkada CEO and co-founder, Filip Kaliszan, when introducing the new range of sensors. “You can think of all the data being combined with the other aspects of our platform, and then begin delivering a truly integrated building and setting the standard for enterprise building security.”