How it works
A stack plan shows each floor of a building as a horizontal bar and fills it with the teams that sit there, sized by the seats or area each team needs. Read top to bottom, it shows every floor's capacity, how much of it is allocated and where there is spare room. Across a portfolio, one stack per building makes the whole footprint readable at a glance.
The inputs are floor capacity, team demand and the rules that limit placement. Demand should come from how many people actually attend on the busiest day, not from the org chart, because a hybrid team of 100 rarely needs 100 desks. Rules cover adjacency (teams that need to sit near each other), teams that must stay on a particular floor, and floors that are closing or reserved.
Planners then move teams between floors to test options: absorb a new team, empty a floor for sublease or merge two departments. The chosen stack becomes the brief for the block plan and seat-level plan on each floor, and for the moves that put it into effect.
How to measure it
- For each floor, compare allocated seats with capacity; the difference is the room left for growth or consolidation.
- Size each team to its peak-day attendance plus a stated buffer, and write the buffer down so others can challenge it.
- Count how many requested adjacencies each option keeps, so options are compared on collaboration as well as space.
- Refresh the stack whenever headcount, attendance policy or team structure changes.
Examples
- A company on four floors finds that two teams on the top floor use half their seats even on their busiest day; the stack plan moves them down and frees the floor.
- Ahead of an acquisition, a real estate team stacks the incoming teams onto existing floors to see whether they fit without a new lease.
Common mistakes
- Stacking by headcount instead of attendance, which fills floors on paper that sit half empty in practice.
- Treating the stack plan as a one-off drawing; it goes stale after the next reorganization.
- Ignoring adjacency, so a plan that saves a floor splits teams that work together every day.
- Stopping at the stack: without a block plan and a move plan, the decision never reaches the floor.
How Kadence helps
Kadence SpaceOps builds stack plans from real attendance and occupancy data in WorkOps. Auto-stack places teams on floors automatically, and planners then drag teams, lock placements or close floors. The SpaceOps AI planning agent can build or change a stack from a plain-language request, scenario planning compares options side by side, and an approved plan can be published to live neighborhoods and assignments in WorkOps or exported as a PDF.
SpaceOps · Scenario planning · Office space planning guide
Frequently asked questions
What is a stacking plan in real estate?
A stacking plan is a floor-by-floor diagram of a building that shows which tenant or team occupies each floor and how much space each uses. Landlords use it to show occupancy and lease expiries by floor. Occupiers use it to plan where their own teams sit and where there is room to grow or consolidate.
What is the difference between stack planning and block planning?
Stack planning decides which floor each team goes on. Block planning works inside one floor and decides which zone each team occupies. The stack comes first, the block plan follows, and a seat-level plan then places individual desks and rooms.
What is the difference between stack planning and move management?
Stack planning models where teams should sit before anything changes. Move management carries out the approved plan by coordinating the people, desks, equipment and communication needed to put it in place.
How often should a stack plan be updated?
Whenever headcount, attendance policy or team structure changes, and always before a lease decision. A stack plan connected to live attendance data can be refreshed as conditions change instead of being redrawn once a year.
What data do you need for office stack planning?
Floor capacities, a list of teams with their headcount and peak-day attendance, the adjacencies that matter, and fixed constraints such as labs, secure areas or floors that are closing. Headcount forecasts let the plan look ahead as well as describe today.
Related terms
- Block plan A floor-level layout that assigns each team to a zone of one floor, between the stack plan and the seat-level plan.
- Scenario planning Modeling several possible futures for space, cost and teams, and comparing them side by side before committing to one.
- Restack Reassigning teams across the floors of a building to free space, absorb growth or improve adjacency, done as a sequence of moves.
- Occupancy planning Deciding where people and teams will work across floors and buildings, and how much space each needs, as the organization changes.
- AI space planning Using AI to draft and test stack plans, seating plans and scenarios from headcount, occupancy data and floor plans.
- Team adjacency Placing teams that work closely together near each other, and keeping those links intact through every move.
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