Beyond the Inventory: The Shift to Real-Time Occupancy Analytics

Almost every college and university in North America has a space inventory. According to the 2026 State of Space Management in Higher Education: Lessons from Leaders report — a joint survey by CampusIQ and Huron of 31 institutions — 97% maintain inventories with space type and area as standard fields. It is the baseline. It is table stakes.

But having a space inventory and having confidence in what is actually happening inside those spaces are two very different things.

The Gap Between What Is Scheduled and What Is Real

That same survey found that 94% of institutions still rely on registrar or course schedules as their primary lens for understanding space utilization. Schedules tell you what is supposed to happen. They do not tell you what actually does.

A space planner at a public research university put it plainly: "I believe the greatest challenge in managing space is accurately tracking how it is used over time."

This is the tension that is driving a significant shift across higher education. Institutions are moving beyond static inventories and scheduled assumptions toward real-time occupancy insights — and the data shows it is already well underway.

58% Are Already Making the Move

The report found that 58% of institutions surveyed now use Wi-Fi data or sensor-based occupancy analytics. That is a meaningful number, especially considering how recently this category has emerged.

On a recent Bow Tie Tuesday episode, Alyson Goff, Senior Director of Insights and Strategy at CampusIQ, shared why this number was encouraging but not surprising. The technology is available. Wi-Fi networks already exist on virtually every campus. The barrier to adoption is no longer technical.

So what is holding the other 42% back?

The Barrier Is Organizational, Not Technical

According to Goff, the most common challenge is not the technology itself but the organizational question of who owns occupancy data. Facilities, IT, and Academic Affairs often operate in separate reporting structures, and while they interact, the relationship tends to be transactional rather than proactive.

Prospective customers frequently say the same thing: they know real-time occupancy insights are the future. They do not want to fall behind. But they see the challenge as one of operationalizing data across departments and getting buy-in from multiple stakeholders.

The good news? More institutions are demonstrating how to do this successfully every semester, and the playbook is becoming clearer.

Starting Small Is the Most Successful Approach

One of the strongest themes from both the report and CampusIQ customer experiences is that institutions do not have to do everything at once. The most successful approach is to start with a pilot.

What does "small" look like? It depends on the institution. A pilot might cover 500,000 sq ft or 5 million. The key is to pick the questions that matter most right now, work through the process internally, and build confidence in the data before expanding.

A CampusIQ customer at a community college in Florida described the before and after well. When the institution relied on periodic space inventories, the data was static. Walk into a meeting a week later and the first thing someone would say is that the numbers are outdated. Once real-time occupancy data replaced that static snapshot, the pushback disappeared entirely. The conversations shifted from debating whether the data was accurate to deciding what to do with it.

New Metrics for a New Era of Space Management

Occupancy analytics also introduces new ways to measure how spaces perform. The report and CampusIQ practitioners point to three metrics gaining adoption:

• Fill rate — a legacy metric that has been used in higher education for years, measuring how many seats are occupied relative to room capacity
• People minutes per square foot — a newer metric that captures the intensity of usage for a space, whether that is a single room, a floor, or an entire building
• Occupied rate — the simplest measure: is anyone present in the space?

These metrics allow institutions to meet people where they are. Not every campus needs the same level of granularity on day one. And as Goff noted, the data will never be perfect. Waiting for perfection is not a reason to delay getting started.

What This Means for the Sector

The shift from static inventories to real-time occupancy insights is not a trend on the horizon. It is happening now, and 58% of the most advanced institutions in the country are already there.

For facilities leaders, campus planners, and CFOs weighing whether to make this move, the message from their peers is consistent: start somewhere, learn from the process, and let the data guide the next step.

As Goff put it: don't be scared. Just get started.

Watch the full Bow Tie Tuesday episode on occupancy analytics with Alyson Goff: Watch on YouTube

Download the full report for insights from 31 institutions on how they are rethinking campus space: 2026 State of Space Management in Higher Education