Space / Space Inventory
Space Inventory: Application Overview
A space inventory is a listing with floor plans on the different types of space in a facility and how these areas are used. For example, a space inventory can report on each floor’s vertical penetration areas (stairways and elevator shafts), service areas (bathrooms, hallways, and closets), departmental boundaries, rooms, and the common areas used by multiple departments (cafeterias, libraries, and conference rooms).
In addition to answering the fundamental question of “What does my space look like?”, space inventories are prerequisites for cost analyses, area use analyses, tenant plans, chargeback analyses, employee occupancy plans, and space planning exercises. Additionally, if you wish to use facility drawings to graphically represent furniture, equipment, or maintenance work locations, you must start with a space inventory and represent each floor’s areas in a drawing.
Facility or space managers typically develop space inventories and then share this information with accountants, human resources managers, tenants, departmental managers, and space planners.
Additionally, sites may opt to implement the Archibus space mobile apps for users who need to access the space inventory from mobile devices when not connected to the Archibus network. See Archibus Space Book mobile app and Space & Occupancy Survey mobile app.
The Space domain offers two ways of working with a space inventory. The general procedures for each method are outlined below. For information on the two methods, see Transactional vs. Non-Transactional Space Methods.
Procedure to Develop a Space Inventory (Transaction-Based)
Note:The transaction-based space inventory method is not available in Archibus SaaS deployments.
To create a space inventory, you follow this basic procedure.
Pre-requisite: To have the Navigator display the transactional method, you must enable workspace transactions.
- Develop background data about your location and organization, such as the building and division and departments.
- For each floor, develop its gross area, vertical penetrations, and service areas, which provide important Building Performance statistics.
- To develop the components of a space inventory (gross areas, vertical penetrations, service areas, groups, and rooms) in floor plan drawings, a CAD manager depicts these items in CAD or Revit. See CAD User: Overview
- Use the concepts listed at the bottom of this topic to decide if you want to document overall department areas with groups, document each individual room, or use a mixture of groups and rooms.
- If you require an inventory that shows a department's general areas, add a group inventory to the space inventory started in step 2.
- Add rooms to your space inventory with the Room Inventory - Set Up & Manage process. This process includes the ability to track shared rooms and room changes over time using workspace transactions.
- Review your room inventory with the Room Inventory - Reports process. You may also need to edit rooms created in CAD.
- With a room inventory now defined, you must maintain it as needs change and departments grow and contract. Others in your company, such as department managers and space managers, may be involved in requesting space, releasing space, and approving space requests.
- Since rooms can be assigned to departments, department managers can analyze the space their departments are using and can also claim and release space for their department by using the tasks of the Department Manager process.
- A space manager analyzes remaining area and other and other departmental analyses and approve space requests by running the tasks of the Space Manager process, including using the Workspace Transaction Console.
- In order to implement the features for generating moves and claiming and releasing space, a service desk manager must first set up the workflow and approval processes by defining service level agreements (SLAs) .
- Periodically, you may wish to survey the space to be sure that it matches the electronic inventory. To aid in the survey process, Archibus offers the Space Occupancy & Survey mobile application so that surveyors in the field can directly access the Archibus space inventory from their mobile devices and smart phones. For information, see Archibus Space Occupancy & Survey mobile app.
Procedure to Develop a Space Inventory (Non-Transactional)
To develop your space inventory without using the transaction features, follow this procedure. Note that steps 1 through 4 are exactly the same as the above method.
- Develop background data about your facility, such as the building name and the divisions and departments.
- For each floor, develop its gross area, vertical penetrations, and service areas, which provide important Building Performance statistics.
- To develop the components of a space inventory (gross areas, vertical penetrations, service areas, groups, and rooms), a CAD manager depicts these items in CAD or Revit. See CAD User: Overview
- Use the concepts listed at the bottom of this topic to decide if you want to document overall department areas with groups, document each individual room, or use a mixture of groups and rooms.
- If you require an inventory that shows a department's general areas, add a group inventory to the space inventory started in step 2.
- Add rooms to your space inventory with the Room Inventory process.
- Review your room inventory with the Room Inventory - Reports process. You may also need to edit rooms created in CAD.
- With a room inventory now defined, you must maintain it as needs change and departments grow and contract. Others in your company, such as department managers and space managers, may need to review space information.
- Since rooms can be assigned to departments, department managers can analyze the space their departments are using with the Department Manager process.
- A space manager analyzes remaining area and other and other departmental analyses by running the tasks of the Space Manager process, including using the Space Console.
- If your site uses alternative space solutions such as hotdesking or team space, you can track space by teams using the Space Console. See Team Space overview.
- Periodically, you may wish to survey the space to be sure that it matches the electronic inventory. To aid in the survey process, Archibus offers mobile apps so that surveyors in the field can directly access the Archibus space inventory from their mobile devices and smart phones. For a non-transaction inventory, you have two mobile choices:
To decide which solution is best for your site, see Space Surveys and Mobile Apps (Concept).
Space Concepts
When developing your space inventory, there are many factors to consider: to what level of detail do I want to inventory my space? do I want to track changes with workspace transactions? how do I use Archibus with BOMA standards? The following concepts will help you answer these types of questions and determine how best to use the Archibus space features.
General Concepts
Transactional vs. Non-Transactional Space Methods
Summary of Space Inventory Methods
- Including Both Groups and Rooms in a Space Inventory
- Comparing Room Lists and Room Plans
- Open Plans with Workstations
- Team Space
- BIM Execution Plan for Space Inventory (Revit)
Using IFMA and BOMA Conventions with an Archibus Space Inventory
Calculating Rentable Area According to BOMA 2017 Methods A and B
Outsourcing Drawing and Data Development
Creating Area Asset Symbols: Topic and Video List
Area Concepts
Workspace Transaction Concepts
Sharing Rooms with Workspace Transactions
The Rooms Table and the Workspace Transactions Table
Average Area per Occupant , per Seat, per Employee
Workspace Transactions and Other Archibus Applications
Service Request Workflow for Move Requests and Departmental Space Requests
Calculating Data: Generating Snapshot or an Historic Average