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CASE STUDY: K-12 EDUCATION
Finding space for 1,300 more students
Arlington School District, Washington-Lee High School
Size: 350,000 Square Feet
Location: Arlington, Virginia
Issue
Washington-Lee High School (Arlington, VA) sought to expand its facilities to a neighboring site to accommodate an anticipated 33% growth in its student body of 2,000 students. This expansion would not only be costly, but the site in question was in demand for other uses by the school district. Arlington School District hired RoundhouseOne to gather, collect and analyze data on spatial utilization and occupancy that would provide the foundation for a data driven decision on how best to accommodate additional students and best use the site in question.
Approach
RoundhouseOne began by gathering and integrating Arlington School District’s existing data sets, including floor plans, class & staff schedules and classroom use targets to understand the “as planned” utilization and occupancy of W&L HS. RoundhouseOne then deployed sensor kits and conducted in person interviews to measure room size, use hours, programming, and occupancy to determine actual utilization and occupancy of the W&L HS.
Findings and Impact
The RoundhouseOne team discovered that W&L High School had significant unused student capacity, with the average classroom used less than 20 hours per week, and only 13% of classrooms met the school’s utilization target. By combining data gathered from the District with data collected from sensors and onsite visits, the Roundhouse team showed W&L leadership that they could accommodate an additional 1,300 students within existing facilities, thereby alleviating the need to expand into the neighboring site and saving millions on construction.
CASE STUDY: HEALTHCARE
Using data and analytics to avoid $30 million in construction costs
Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital – Stanford University Medical Center
Client: Stanford University
Collaborators: MKThink (Architects)
Size: 220,000 Square Feet
Location: Palo Alto, California
Issue
Stanford University Medical Center is a world class hospital and has a long tradition of leadership in pioneering research, creative teaching protocols, and effective clinical therapies. It is consistently ranked among the top hospitals in the nation for innovative programs. Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, part of the Stanford University Medical Center is one of the few dedicated pediatric and obstetric care hospitals in the Bay Area and serves over 500,000 pediatric outpatients annually, with over 725 world class doctors, and over 35 specialty services. New clinical offerings and corresponding new hiring plans placed additional demands on the existing facilities and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital was considering an additional building at a cost well into the tens of millions of dollars and a 10-12 year build time. Lucille Packard Children’s Hospital brought RoundhouseOne in to cut through the politics and perceptions and provide leadership with an objective, data based view of capacity and use.
Approach
RoundhouseOne gathered existing data from the client including building drawings, staff schedules, appointment logs, and room assignments. We then augmented that data set with data collected by the RoundhouseOne team to create an integrated spatial database, which the team then analyzed to identify excess and underutilized space within the existing facilities footprint. We ended up finding 20,000 SF of space that could be relocated without restricting operations and that the rooms were at most 50% utilization.
Findings and Impact
RoundhouseOne’s data gathering and subsequent analysis found 21,000 square feet that could be made available to accommodate the new program requirements and additional faculty and staff. As a result, SUMC avoided $30M in construction cost with no adverse impacts on the quality of care.
CASE STUDY: HEALTHCARE
Consolidating facilities with no decrease in appointment capacity
Client: Private Medical Practice
Size: 15,000 Square Feet
Location: California
Issue
A private medical practice had made the decision not to renew their lease on one of their 4 clinic locations and sought insights into if and how their core clinic facility could accommodate the increased appointment load.
Approach
RoundhouseOne gathered existing data from the client including building drawings, staff schedules, appointment logs, appointment durations and room assignments. We analyzed this data to identify periods of high and low room use, appointent load and physician clinic presence, identifying daily averages, peak use hours and corresponding sustainable levels of patient throughput.
The practice's questions about space utilization extended beyond the spaces for which they had scheduled use data, so RoundhouseOne's sensor team placed occupancy sensors in key office locations to understand regular use patterns outside of exam rooms.
Findings and Impact
RoundhouseOne’s analysis showed that despite consolidating another office into the core facility, this private practice had the space and personnel to add 50% more appointments during core operating hours at minimal or no additional cost to the practice. Any foreseeable additional space needs could be met by consolidating low use spaces into shared spaces, with overlap analysis identifying office buddy pairings that would result in little or no contemporaneous office space use.