Assessing the current estate

The core aim of this project was to assess whether Livewell’s current estate could accommodate the service needs. The project focused on two key priorities:

• Identifying a financially realistic solution for Children, Young People, and Family Services.
• Exploring whether space for Mental Health clinics could be delivered using the existing estate, without expanding the property footprint.

Identifying opportunities

We selected four key sites across the estate — each offering a combination of opportunity and high-quality infrastructure. These building types were the Community Services and Office space, Corporate Space, Training Centre and Clinic Space.

Working with Abintra, we installed discreet, wireless sensors across each building. These sensors collected real-time occupancy data over a three-month period, feeding into an interactive dashboard. This gave the team a highly detailed view of how space was being used — by building, service, room type, and even by individual desk.

The data showed:

• Consistently low usage across all rooms and workspaces, occupation levels were below targets.
• Mismatch between bookings and reality: Many rooms marked as ‘in use’ in the booking system were actually sitting empty.
• Heatmaps and time-of-day analysis further revealed large areas of high-quality space were underused, Mondays and Fridays were especially quiet – with occupancy dipping to as low as 15–20%.
• Underutilisation by space type:
  • Clinic rooms: Target occupancy was 70%, bookings suggested 61%, but actual use was only 50%.
  • Meeting rooms: 68% booked, 60% target, but only 39% used.
  • Workstations: Just 39% used against a 70% target.

This real-world data gave clarity: significant space was available, even where it had appeared fully utilised.