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Facilities Performance

Is the function working — or signing the wrong lease for the right-looking reason?

The Gauge

Performance pairs every "what good looks like" with a matching "what bad looks like." A target without a paired failure mode is optimism. A failure mode without a target is fear. Both together is a gauge.

Every gauge below names a threshold, a warning, a bad state, and a decision flow that ends in Head-of-Facilities action. Every alert has an owner.

Paired Gauges

G1. Occupancy cost as % of revenue

  • Good: Within the operating-model envelope per location — SaaS < 5%, services 5–10%, manufacturing 3–7%, logistics 4–8%, retail 8–15%.
  • Warning: Within envelope but trending toward ceiling for two consecutive quarters.
  • Bad: Above ceiling for one full quarter.
  • AI-augmentation: finance-agent flags the breach the day it crosses; assembles the renegotiation / sublease / exit option set.
  • Crypto-instrument: none today. On-chain lease registry would enable real-time comparable-rent benchmarking.

G2. Revenue per FTE (location-attributable)

  • Good: At or above the industry benchmark for the operating model.
  • Warning: Within 10% below benchmark for two consecutive quarters.
  • Bad: Below benchmark for one year — implies either wage band too high for revenue model, or facilities choice diluted productivity.
  • AI-augmentation: workplace-agent pulls peer benchmarks and proposes a wage-rent substitution test.
  • Crypto-instrument: none.

G3. Revenue per m² (location-attributable)

  • Good: Above the density target for the operating model.
  • Warning: Within 15% below target — typically caused by overspacing or underused floors.
  • Bad: Below target for two quarters — sublease or contract option triggered.
  • AI-augmentation: workplace-agent runs photo + headcount → density audit; proposes right-sizing.
  • Crypto-instrument: none.

G4. FTE per m² (density)

  • Good: Matches the operating model — open plan 8–12 m²/FTE; hybrid 12–18; cellular / lab / production / regulated 18+.
  • Warning: 20% above target — paying for empty space.
  • Bad: 40% above target — sublease or surrender decision is overdue.
  • AI-augmentation: workplace-strategy-agent computes density vs target from current headcount and recommends.
  • Crypto-instrument: none.

G5. Lease horizon coverage

  • Good: Lease term ≥ planning horizon for operations; break option aligns with first scaling milestone.
  • Warning: Less than 12 months remaining on a location material to revenue and no decision routed.
  • Bad: Lease expiry within 6 months with no renew / move / sublease decision and no team assembled.
  • AI-augmentation: facilities-agent maintains the lease calendar; opens the renewal workflow 18 months from expiry.
  • Crypto-instrument: smart-contract escrow could automate renewal-trigger funds release.

G6. Joint reversibility cost trend

  • Good: Joint cost to exit (lease + headcount plan, at 12 / 24 / 36 months) trending down or stable relative to revenue.
  • Warning: Joint cost growing faster than revenue.
  • Bad: Joint cost exceeds two quarters of operating revenue at any horizon — facility commitment is now load-bearing on solvency.
  • AI-augmentation: finance-agent recomputes joint cost on every headcount change and lease event.
  • Crypto-instrument: none today.

G7. Fit-out payback

  • Good: Fit-out + equipment payback ≤ 50% of remaining lease term.
  • Warning: Payback 50–80% of remaining term — option exercise becomes expensive.
  • Bad: Payback exceeds remaining term — capex was misallocated against lease horizon.
  • AI-augmentation: finance-agent runs the payback calc per fit-out proposal before commit.
  • Crypto-instrument: DeFi lending against the lease could finance fit-out without personal guarantee — emerging.

What This Page Does Not Measure

Gauges intentionally omitted, and why.

  • Headline rent in absolute dollars. Without TCO, OPEX, incentives, fit-out, and revenue context, headline rent compares nothing.
  • Building "quality" or "prestige". Both are inputs to Lens B (revenue / capability impact) under Process, not standalone gauges.
  • Tenant satisfaction in a single number. Decomposes into G3, G4, and incident-log signals from Positions — single composite scores hide the real driver.

The function is working when all seven gauges sit in good simultaneously. Any gauge in warning triggers a Process workflow. Any gauge in bad routes a decision to the Head of Facilities.