Case study · Leisure & aquatic centres
Anonymous occupancy analytics + camera-free fall detection
Two sensor systems, one managed subscription — live at a Darebin council aquatic & recreation centre.
The challenge
"How is our space actually used?" A busy centre runs its gym, classes and pool on rosters and capacity limits — but without objective, real-time data on how full each area gets by hour and day, those decisions run on guesswork and manual head-counts.
"What happens when someone collapses where nobody can see?" Accessible toilets and change areas are the highest collapse-risk spaces in the building — and the one place a camera can never go. The emergency cord only helps a person well enough to reach it. A NSW coroner has formally found people have died, unnoticed, in locked accessible toilets with no automatic alarm.
The solution
Zone occupancy analytics — 5 sensors, 3 zones
Anonymous ceiling people-counters across the Free Weights, Classes and Stretch zones report counts and dwell to a live utilisation dashboard — the objective basis for staffing, programming and capacity decisions. No images are stored or transmitted, and no personal data is captured; the analytics are owned by the client.
Privacy-radar fall detection — 7 sensors
Radar monitors the accessible toilets by the gym, pool and school change areas — detecting a fall or prolonged no-movement with no camera, alerting staff within seconds and escalating to SMS if unacknowledged. It is the only fall-detection technology deployable where cameras are legally impossible.
Results
Occupancy — from guesswork to a re-stacked floor
Before, "how busy is the gym?" was answered by feel and the occasional clipboard head-count. Anonymous zone counting replaced that with an hour-by-hour picture of how Free Weights, Classes and Stretch were really used — and it surfaced what staff couldn't see from the floor: the areas that felt permanently packed were only at true capacity in a few narrow windows, while other space sat underused for most of the day.
That turned a standing complaint — "the weights area is always congested" — into a fixable layout problem. The floor was re-stacked on the evidence: equipment concentrated where the counts were densest, the free-weights pinch-points eased, and the underused overflow and stretch space put to better work. Same footprint, planned around real demand instead of a hunch.
It also gave the centre a target to manage to. The goal is to keep each zone at or below 85% utilisation — busy enough to be efficient, with the breathing room that keeps a space comfortable and safe. With live counts, that number is no longer a guess: staff can see when a zone is heading past it and act before it tips into congestion.
Falls — from a call-centre chain to seconds
Continuous fall and no-movement monitoring now covers the accessible toilets by the gym, pool and school change areas — the private, camera-impossible spaces where an unwitnessed collapse is most dangerous.
The old way: emergency call buttons that routed to a remote monitoring service, which then phoned the duty manager to arrange a response — a chain measured in minutes, and only useful if the person was conscious and able to reach the button.
Now: two things replaced that chain. The distress buttons alert on-site staff directly — the alarm hits the duty manager's dashboard in seconds, with no remote call centre in the loop, escalating by SMS if it isn't acknowledged. And the radar needs no button at all: it detects a collapse on its own, covering the person who's unconscious or can't reach a button — the gap the old cords and buttons never could.
Operational value
Anonymous, privacy-safe data for capacity and layout decisions, plus a documented duty-of-care safety net — all with no capital outlay and nothing for the centre's team to run.
Every council leisure centre faces the same two problems
Constructio solves both — anonymous occupancy analytics and camera-free radar fall detection — with no capital outlay, on one managed subscription. The next step is a short, fixed-fee managed pilot at one centre — see your own data before committing to anything.