PostNord: space monitoring to increase space efficiency and sustainability

Challenge

PostNord, the leading supplier of logistic and communication solutions in the Nordics, is a merger of the Swedish and Danish postal services. Since the merger (2009), the market and the conditions affecting the business have altered dramatically. Postal operators across the globe are faced with considerably lower mail volumes. To survive and thrive, they need to convert themselves into lean and digitized logistics companies. This necessitates a radical restructuring of their organizations. As business models shift, historical real estate is often no longer a good match. It needs well-informed adjustments to meet space efficiency and environmental sustainability objectives.

Solution

In the context of wider IoT initiatives to improve services and reduce costs, PostNord set up a smart building pilot to monitor space occupancy on the top floor of its Stockholm HQ ‘Arken’ building. This pilot project (1,000 m² and 50 occupants in scope) rigurously tested all technical and content aspects. The Cobundu smart building platform was found to meet all requirements in terms of data accuracy while at the same time ensuring data privacy and security.

The pilot uncovered opportunities to decrease the number of workstations, optimize cleaning times, and improve meeting room occupancy through a transparant booking system using live sensor data.

The success of the validation phase motivated PostNord to scale up and fully implement the space monitoring solution at its Danish headquarters in Copenhagen, where the scope (2020) includes 555 desks, 39 meeting rooms as well as sanitary spaces (34 toilets).

Result

Occupancy sensor data and dashboards provide detailed insights into how desk and meeting spaces are used. It shows which desks are sitting empty or which meeting rooms are underused. With that information the company was able to reduce the number of workstations, improve meeting room occupancy and optimize cleaning times.

After an organizational change and the creation of new business units, PostNord knew exactly where it could move people to a new home base or where it should not transfer people because occupancy was already at the right level.

Given that the space in this building is rented in a modular way, space efficiency improvements immediately bring cost reductions to PostNord, which resulted in a payback period of the sensor project of just one month.