Better space data visibility unlocks big savings for Highmark Health

Manual processes and zero visibility

When Beth Kocur joined Highmark as the director of workplace design and delivery, she inherited a manual, paper-based space management system that mostly used AutoCAD drawings. They had thousands of employees spread across multiple states. What they did not have was a single, trusted system of record for space and occupancy.

“We had zero understanding of where people were,” she explains. “We had no way of tracking occupancy except for manually walking spaces and looking to see who was sitting in what seat. We would take floor plans and literally erase someone's name and put someone else's name there.” They would then reconcile those paper changes against HR data pulled from separate systems. 

“The team would spend at least a week a month tracking,” she says. 

Senior project manager Mark Tishko remembers those days, adding that the inconsistent data collection and reporting methods led to unreliable records and little clarity around true utilization. 

“We had different properties around the portfolio, different groups in different states and nothing was standardized or consistent,” he says. “Some of the information was accurate, some of it was not.” 

It was more than inconvenience. It created real risk and cost. 

Kocur describes how hard it was just to understand the basics of the portfolio. “It was such a heavy lift. It made zero sense to me why we never actually went through the effort to try to get this automated and find a software package that would help us.” 

Without reliable data, strategic questions piled up, and the team had no way to answer them: 

• Which floors or buildings could be consolidated to reduce leases or backfill with tenants? 
• Which teams are constantly moving and why? 
• How much space do different business units actually need? 

A configurable, integrated workplace platform

“After understanding the cost of what my team spends doing the work and comparing that to actually getting a software package, it was really a no brainer,” Kocur says.

Highmark evaluated several vendors. Tishko remembers what set OpenBlue Workplace and OpenBlue Employee apart.

“It was the most robust in the space area and seemed the most user-friendly, pretty intuitive, had good user interface, pretty simple,” he recalls. It met their stringent security requirements and offered flexible integrations. 

“We decided to move forward because the package gave us the ability to customize it,” says Kocur. "There were a lot of things we did not have to be force-fed a certain template for. We could build it for ourselves, and we could evolve it over time.”

They started with the fundamentals. 

1. Standardize AutoCAD: Tishko and the team led a portfolio-wide effort to standardize every drawing. “We went through and standardized all of our AutoCADs, same layers, same XREFs,” he says. “Making sure that all of our drawings met the exact same standards.” 
2. Build the space inventory and connect HR: Next came the “heavy lift” of capturing every room and seat across the portfolio, then integrating HR data so every employee could be assigned to a seat and department. 
3. Expand into a modular workplace ecosystem: From there, Highmark grew with the platform.

“We started off with the space management module, and then we went to move management, and then work orders, and then project management,” Tishko says. “And then we even grew into the resource scheduler employee-side as well.”

“It's become the nucleus of our corporate real estate department," Kocur says. "We use it for everything.”

With OpenBlue Workplace and Employee, Kocur’s team could easily oversee: 

• Space and occupancy management 
• Move, add and change workflows 
• Work order and facility maintenance requests 
• Room scheduling and events 
• Design and construction project management 

For Highmark employees, OpenBlue Employee powers effortless desk and room reservations, interactive floor plans and integrated service requests. 

Even eight years after implementing OpenBlue, Kocur and Tishko continue to develop new ways to connect and simplify processes in the workplace. Their next goal is to create one integrated workflow for new hires and their managers to simplify onboarding. After that, they're bringing events staff into the OpenBlue fold so they can enjoy the same workplace integrations, employee data and scheduling tools as everyday meetings. 

Data-driven decisions, controlled costs and a better employee experience

The first and most immediate impact was visibility.

“The team didn't realize what they didn't have until they started getting used to the system of the different departments and hierarchies, and who sat where and stacking diagrams and stuff like that," Tishko says. "It gave them a lot of insight to help with more strategic decisions that we didn't have in the past.” 

Kocur has seen the same effect. With accurate data, her team can spot when a floor designed for 150 people only has 50 scattered across it. A leader might feel “out of space” because their team is spread out. The system reveals the truth. “We can then consolidate them and then maybe consolidate another team into that footprint,” she says. 

Today, Highmark’s corporate real estate portfolio in OpenBlue spans 4.7 million square feet and supports 14,000 employees across four states. At that scale, transforming their space management systems to a single digital source of truth has delivered more than clarity and time savings.

“Because we are able to look at the utilization, we can then go in and do different scenario planning to figure out, where can we cut that space? And so we've vacated a lot of real estate, and that saved us money,” Kocur says. 

Highmark's story proves that such a strategic shift frees teams from manual tracking, exposes hidden costs and turns square footage into a lever for smarter business decisions. For leaders managing distributed portfolios under constant pressure to do more with less, the takeaway is clear. When a workplace platform becomes the nucleus of operations, every move, every seat and every work order is an opportunity for growth.

About Highmark Health

A national blended health organization, Highmark Health and its portfolio of healthcare businesses cover a diversified spectrum of essential health-related needs including health insurance, healthcare delivery, population health management, dental solutions, reinsurance solutions and innovative technology solutions. Their “blended” approach supports both patients and clinicians by redesigning care delivery to build a more holistic, integrated health ecosystem.