Facility planning: A strategic approach to a better office

Facility planning is essential for the modern office, especially given the rapidly changing landscape of today’s workplace. With more and more companies embracing remote work, hybrid work, and more flexible working in general, they need strategic solutions that come from good facility planning in order to maintain structure and productivity. But what does this mean for FMs?

In this article, we explore why and how facility planning can help companies stay profitable and better support their workers. We’ll cover four steps FMs can follow for facility planning, and discuss how AI is making space planning easier than its ever been.

What is facility planning?

Facility planning is the systematic process that smart organizations use to ensure they have the facilities and related resources necessary to meet both their short and long term goals. Sometimes referred to as strategic facility planning, it’s the key decision-making that companies use to future-proof their workspaces. 

The reality is that simply following space management best practices isn’t always enough for your facility. Without good strategic planning and foresight, companies often stay stuck in problem-solving mode, instead of anticipating new problems before they arrive. 

On the other hand, when companies realistically assess their current and future space and facility needs, they can put themselves in a much better position to weather any new storms. 

In other words, facility planning is what helps companies take a proactive approach to their workplace strategy and real estate management, instead of a reactive one.  It’s about bringing business goals in line with facility goals. It’s also about ensuring both the business and its facilities are ready for the future. 

Who is responsible for facility planning?

The facility planning process is complex, requiring a high level of collaboration in the workplace.

That said, facility needs are typically handled by a facility manager (FM), or a facility management team. FMs make great planners, because they typically have both the data and resources at hand to make smart decisions for the office. And because keeping things running smoothly and anticipating needs is ultimately their main goal. 

FMs are responsible for all aspects of facility management, including ensuring employees have the tools and space they need to do their jobs properly.  As such, they are in the best position to understand facility goals. This is especially true when they collaborate with either an executive or growth team to stay up to speed on overarching business goals as well. 

Moreover, the roles and responsibilities of FMs have been evolving since the pandemic, so that they are more and more becoming leaders in their organizations—again, priming them to be in the best position to make good facility plans. 

This is also one of the main reasons why facility management services are usually best handled in-house—either by a dedicated FM, or by using facility management software to disperse these tasks among invested team members.  

What are the four steps in facilities planning?

No matter who manages facilities planning for your organization, this process works best when it follows the following four steps.

1. Understand your goals

As we’ve mentioned, facility planning is about aligning business goals with both current facilities and any planned expansions. Before any planning actually takes place, the planning task force needs to identify the business demands coupled with the realities of their existing facility.

Thankfully, these two perspectives often dovetail. 

For example, cost-effective sustainability is quickly becoming a goal of virtually every business. Improving space planning with AI can significantly reduce the amount of corporate real estate required. A win-win for both the executives and the boots-on-the-ground employees.

Remember, though, business drivers will vary from company to company. These can range from:

• Responding to changing markets or demographics
• Adopting new information technology
• Preparing for potential mergers
• Opening new offices or storefronts

And of course, virtually every company is concerned with growth. 

Identifying which goals are most important now is the critical first step to planning. To make this process work, everyone on the facility planning team needs to understand the mission, vision, and company culture. FMs should therefore be provided with the necessary tools and access to evaluate the entire real estate portfolio.

Learn how OfficeSpace’s new AI space planning technology can remove the headaches associated with real estate planning

2. Analyze and set benchmarks

Of course, planning doesn’t stop with simply understanding your goals. You also need to understand how to actually make those goals a reality. To properly plan a facility, FMs need to leverage any and all existing data about the organization’s existing space management. This isn’t just about knowing your square footage; it’s about understanding how those square feet impact staffing concerns and long-term goals. 

Specifically, FMs need three tools to analyze their existing workspace and make plans for change:

• Comprehensive reports and analytics that provide actionable insights into the existing needs of employees and real-time use of existing space, including occupancy and portfolio reports
• Scenario planning software, which makes it easy to virtually test out the impacts of reconfigurations before having to manually implement them
• Stack plans, which provide a high-level picture of how space is currently being used

When these systems are in place, and the right data is being collected, FMs can use them to perform gap analysis and set benchmarks. This will guide future facility management in the best way possible. 

3. Start planning

Once FMs understand both their goals and their benchmarks, they can begin the actual work of creating their master plan. This is when the challenging work of translating a facility plan into a business plan happens. It will look different, depending on the business drivers for your organization, as we touched on earlier. 

To plan properly, FMs should follow the following playbook:

1. Document your primary objectives
2. Seek input from different teams and departments at all stages of the process
3. Conduct a risk assessment of any plans you have. This assessment should include cost analysis, which can be done using scenario reports. 
4. Develop a method for both gaining approval and reporting on results. (Especially if your plans include new working policies such as implementing flexible seating arrangements like hot desking)

4. Start acting

The more FMs are able to maximize the first steps of facilities planning, the easier it will be to act on their plan. 

This is also where the right tools become essential. The best way to implement any new changes to a workplace or facility is with the right facility management software. Ideally, this is one that can integrate with your company’s existing integrated workplace management system (IWMS).

Finally, remember that strategic facility planning isn’t a ‘one and done’ occurrence. This is an iterative process. Any plans will need to be assessed, adapted, and maybe even rewritten on an ongoing basis.  

How has AI changed space planning in facilities? 

For decades, strategic facility planning was limited to descriptive and diagnostic analytics—it told you what happened and why. It has also historically been a manual process. Today, AI has fundamentally shifted this process from reactive reporting to predictive and prescriptive decision-making.

The recent acquisition of Dojo AI by OfficeSpace Software marks the beginning of the AI operating system era for the built environment. This intelligence transforms facility planning in three key ways:

• Predictive utilization forecasting: Instead of relying on historical spreadsheets, AI analyzes real-time data from every source (badge swipes, Wi-Fi logs, meeting bookings) to forecast future space needs. This capability ensures that FMs can proactively right-size their portfolio and avoid costly, reactive measures.
• Instant optimization and scenario modeling: AI eliminates the bottleneck of manual stack plan creation. It can instantly generate and compare multiple space optimization scenarios, suggesting the most efficient layouts, optimal team adjacencies, and highest ROI options in minutes, not months.
• Agentic automation: The platform moves beyond simple reporting to deploying AI agents that take action. These agents automate 50-60% of routine planner tasks, such as flagging underutilized space for consolidation or automatically suggesting maintenance schedules, freeing FMs to focus on high-level strategy and employee experience.

By embedding patented AI space planning directly into the platform you know and love, OfficeSpace empowers leaders to move past uncertainty and use data to confidently drive cost savings and operational efficiency across their entire corporate real estate portfolio.

What are the dangers of not having a plan? 

Like Benjamin Franklin famously said, if you fail to plan, you are planning to fail. Winging it is simply not an option. Especially when you’re managing something as complex as even a small company—let alone complete enterprise facility management. 

As the pandemic taught us, things don’t always go to plan. But the companies that had a system in place for making and implementing plans were the ones that were able to more quickly adjust to the new reality. Companies that have the right approach to facility planning will always be more nimble and resilient than those that fail to plan in the first place. 

OfficeSpace offers a software solution that makes facility planning easy — now powered by Dojo AI. Reach out for a free demo. 

Photos: Thirdman, Sora Shimazaki, ANTONI SHKRABA production, Mikhail Nilov