Peak Utilisation Should Shape Capacity Decisions

Executive perspective

The hardest hour of the week often reveals more than the average. The practical challenge is to preserve decision quality when business demand, workforce patterns and market conditions change at different speeds.

Evidence context

CBRE’s 2025 European occupier survey reports a 25-percentage-point gap between weekly average utilisation and peak-day average utilisation. It also finds employers’ desired attendance of three or more days exceeds achieved attendance.

Average utilisation smooths away the conditions employees and services actually experience. At peak, collaboration rooms can become scarce, transport and food services overloaded, noise elevated and support response slower even while substantial area remains empty elsewhere.

Osmos Global analysis

Capacity decisions should therefore examine both the peak level and the shape of demand. A short predictable spike may be addressed through team scheduling, flexible overflow or service scaling; a sustained constraint may justify reconfiguration or additional space.

The discipline is to locate the bottleneck before selecting the remedy. Total floor area, specific room types, technology reliability and social coordination are separate constraints and should not be collapsed into one utilisation percentage.

Leadership implications

For CRE leaders, the priority is to make assumptions, thresholds and trade-offs visible before a transaction becomes urgent. FM and workplace leaders should translate portfolio choices into operational capacity, service and employee effects. Finance should verify timing, full transition cost and realised benefit. Business leaders must own the demand and risk assumptions on which the real-estate action depends.

A practical decision test The proposal should survive three questions. First, what observable problem is being solved, and which population, location and period define the baseline? Second, what credible alternatives were compared on the same cost horizon and against the same operational requirements? Third, which future event would make today’s decision wrong or incomplete? If these questions cannot be answered, the organisation has a transaction preference rather than a portfolio case.

Decision papers should state confidence explicitly. Verified lease and cost records can be labelled measured; approved business plans can be labelled committed; workforce and market assumptions should remain forecast; and management choices should be labelled judgment. This simple classification prevents an attractive scenario from being presented with the certainty of audited history.

Implementation guidance

Begin with a bounded decision and a documented baseline. Compare at least three credible options on a common horizon. Identify which evidence is measured, forecast or judgment, and define the trigger that would change the preferred option. After implementation, review whether capacity, cost, quality, flexibility and risk moved as expected.

Practical actions

• Publish peak, median and distribution measures. • Identify shortages by activity and setting. • Align services with peak demand. • Use expansion only after operational options are tested.

Risks, limitations and unresolved questions Reported percentages rely on participating occupiers’ definitions and should not be treated as a universal capacity standard. Portfolio decisions also depend on local leases, tax, regulation, labour conditions, technical due diligence and business priorities. No cited percentage should be extrapolated beyond its stated sample or geography.

Source notes

[1] CBRE. European Office Occupier Sentiment Survey 2025. 1 October 2025. https://www.cbre.com/insights/reports/european-office-occupier-sentiment-survey-2025 Accessed 30 August 2026.

Editorial note

This is original Osmos Global analysis based on the cited source. Source findings are distinguished from Osmos interpretation and recommendations.

No third-party chart, table or protected expression is reproduced.