The Unite Group is the United Kingdom's largest provider of purpose-built student accommodation with over 70,000 rooms across 162 properties in 23 leading university towns and cities. The Unite Group is committed to raising the standard in the student accommodation sector by providing students with a 'Home for Success,' building communities where students can belong and grow.
Their most recent development is Hayloft Point, located in the heart of central London—a £190m flagship purpose-built student accommodation spanning 24 storeys and providing rooms for over 920 students.
How The Unite Group Leveraged Beonic’s People Counting Sensors and WiFi Analytics To Enhance Student Experiences at Hayloft Point
The Challenge
With such a significant investment undertaken, The Unite Group wanted to ensure that Hayloft Point was delivering the resident experience students require. Many new additional facilities such as a gym, gaming and karaoke rooms, as well as shared and individual study rooms, have been incorporated into Hayloft Point.
It was essential to gain insights into how this building was being utilised by its 920 residents. Which function rooms and shared spaces were being used at different points in the day, by how many students and how often?
Understanding this behaviour would enable the Unite Group to focus their future investments more intelligently on which facilities are being under- or overutilised. The Unite Group also needed access to accurate occupancy data to manage health and safety matters, such as individual students making use of the gym areas of the building.
The Solution
To better understand occupancy and space utilisation, The Unite Group teamed up with Beonic to capture and correlate data from several sources, including The Hayloft's existing WiFi access points and Beonic's 3D people counting sensors.
Beonic deployed 3D people counting sensors across 12 different rooms and shared spaces (i.e. the gym, library, shared and individual study rooms, and the game rooms) within Hayloft Point in order to accurately monitor people occupancy and footfall in real time.
Moreover, by utilising the location feeds off the existing WiFi infrastructure, Beonic can track accurate visitor dwell time information per location with the help of WiFi analytics. This enables a better understanding of the utilisation of each facility as well as overall trends.
The Unite Group is then able to combine both data sources in the Beonic platform, enabling them to track and ultimately understand how their facilities are being used.
The Results
Beonic delivered a solution that contains both people counting sensors and WiFi analytics tools. By reporting occupancy and location data together, The Unite Group team is able to better understand how each of their facility spaces are being utilised. This knowledge enables The Unite Group to then optimise their shared space utilisation and energy efficiency, ensuring that energy is not wasted on heating or cooling spaces that are not being utilised and allowing the facilities team to focus their efforts in the busier locations.
The Beonic platform also allows for alerts for specific rooms or spaces. If Hayloft Point introduced a policy prohibiting lone workouts in the gym after 9 p.m. to ensure student safety, an alert can be triggered to reception when the occupancy threshold falls below two people in the fitness zones. These alerts can be sent via SMS, email, or even system-to-system notifications. This would help the on-site team ensure a duty of care for their 920 residents.
Over time, these insights will provide clarity to The Unite Group on how their spaces are being utilised and what behavioural trends are resulting from these facilities. The Unite Group can now make data-driven decisions regarding which facilities appeal to their students whilst optimising their own operational efficiency, increasing customer satisfaction with their facilities.
Visit our Solutions pages to learn more about Beonic’s people counting sensors and WiFi analytics tools, or reach out to our team to request a demo today.
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