PointGrab Deploys Smart Sensing Solution at Deloitte London Headquarters

According to an announcement, Deloitte has selected PointGrab, a machine learning and computer vision company, to deploy its smart sensing platform at the company’s new UK and North West Europe headquarters in London. Deloitte’s UK headquarters is the largest office building in the world to achieve leading certifications for being both an exemplary “green” building and one ergonomically designed to enhance the wellbeing of its occupants.

The new 270,000 square-foot building, which Deloitte occupied in July 2018, is the culmination of a four-year program defining the workplace of the future for the firm’s employees and clients. The workplace supports a rapidly evolving talent pool and offers a huge range of different work activities and styles, with spaces that fuel creativity and ultimately generate more collaboration across the business.

PointGrab’s solution is designed to enable Deloitte to analyze and optimize the utilization of its work spaces. The PointGrab system deploys thousands of ceiling-mounted sensors, which cover the entire workspace and provide Deloitte with accurate information about the location and number of people in each space. The PointGrab system preserves the building occupants’ privacy, as it doesn’t transmit or store data that enables personal identification.

PointGrab sensors feed Deloitte's building management applications with real-time data about how people are using the workspace, focusing on the following data points:

• Real-time desk occupancy
• Real-time meeting room occupancy
• Foot traffic tracking via Virtual Traffic Line
• Elevator and lobby usage
• Usage of public areas such as receptions, kitchens, and collaboration spaces, etc.

PointGrab’s Virtual Traffic Line feature uses foot traffic data to assist in more efficient building maintenance management. For example, the system can alert cleaning crews to attend to spaces that have hosted a certain amount of traffic.

“PointGrab’s unique offering enables us to manage our assets efficiently while promoting the wellbeing of our people. The system serves us both for real-time applications like hot-desking and for space utilization reports of any given area within the premises,” said Dominic McGrory, Director of Workspace Performance, Deloitte. “PointGrab sensors have a unique mix of high accuracy rates and advanced features, which enable us to truly understand what is going on at any given moment.”