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Case Study

What shared spaces reveal when you finally measure them

Cafés, cinemas, pool areas, dining rooms, lounges, gyms. A growing residential portfolio was cleaning, servicing and staffing all of it on assumption. Real utilisation data took up to 20% out of maintenance costs.

CC
Catherine Caruana-McManus Director of Sales and Strategy    9 September 2026    3 min read
Residents sitting and talking in a bright shared dining space at a resort living community
Shared amenity is where resident experience is won or lost, and where operating cost quietly accumulates.
On this page
  1. Context
  2. The Challenge
  3. The Solution
  4. The Outcome

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Context

A leading residential property developer and operator specialising in retirement and resort living, residential leasing, student accommodation and specialist disability housing has experienced significant portfolio growth over the past three years.

Recognised for innovation in lifestyle-led communities, the organisation has invested heavily in advanced building management systems and sustainability initiatives, earning multiple awards for excellence in urban development, construction and master planning. Resident comfort, safety and experience remain central to its operating model.

The Challenge

As the portfolio expanded, the organisation required deeper, data-driven insight into how shared spaces were being used. This included understanding occupancy, movement patterns and dwell times across cafés and bars, cinemas, wellness and pool areas, dining rooms, lounges, reception spaces, gyms and recreation rooms.

Existing approaches lacked the accuracy, scalability and cost-efficiency needed to support operational decision-making. The organisation sought a low-cost, privacy-preserving solution that could deliver reliable, real-time insights into a centralised Platform to optimise maintenance, staffing and service delivery.

2
flagship properties in the initial deployment
Days
from installation to data flowing
20%
maintenance cost savings, up to

The Solution

Meshed deployed nCounter people counting devices alongside motion and indoor air quality sensors across two flagship properties. Indoor LoRaWAN gateways provided reliable coverage across all shared spaces, enabling rapid deployment.

Data began flowing within days to Meshed's secure, cloud-hosted Platform, where facility managers configured tailored views, alerts and reports using a flexible interface.

A people per hour bar chart on the Meshed Platform showing a sharp morning peak of just over 90 people around midday, falling to near zero overnight
People per hour across a single day. The shape of the demand curve is what tells a facility manager when to roster cleaning and service, and when not to.
A dwell time heatmap on the Meshed Platform showing seven days of visits banded from under 10 minutes through to more than six hours
Seven days of dwell time, banded from under ten minutes to more than six hours. Short visits and long stays place very different demands on the same room.

Occupancy tells you a room was used. Dwell time tells you what it was used for.

The Outcome

Access to real-time utilisation data delivered maintenance cost savings of up to 20%, with cleaning, servicing and staffing aligned to actual usage patterns. Operational efficiency improved, while resident experience was enhanced through better resource allocation.

The result: measurable cost savings, improved service delivery, and a scalable, data-driven approach to managing premium residential living environments.

The same sensing approach applies across commercial and civic buildings. See how it works in smart facilities management.

Cleaning to a schedule costs the same every week. Cleaning to demand does not.

Catherine Caruana-McManus
Written by
Catherine Caruana-McManus

Director of Sales and Strategy at Meshed. A recognised leader in intelligent asset management & smart cities & has delivered hundreds of successful customer deployments across Australia, Asia Pacific and the US. Founding Director of the Connected Technology Alliance Australia and former Director at KPMG and IBM.

Align cost to how spaces are actually used

Anonymised occupancy and dwell data across shared amenity, with no images recorded and nobody identified.