Whilst conducting their core business activity organisations occupy premises and thus incur a succession of occupancy costs. As organisations in all sectors become acutely aware of their magnitude, the subject of occupancy costs is attracting an increasing amount of management attention. Yet the field still lacks the basic foundations from which to launch a consistent approach.

This paper seeks to redress this by arguing the need for a co-ordinated and uniform approach to the collection, classification and analysis of premises related expenditure. Such an approach will promote familiarity and confidence and thus introduce commonality of dialogue and consistency in analysis.

The paper addresses the difficulties associated with modeling occupancy costs, before examining current commercial practices for the collection, classification and analysis of premises related cost data by reference to both recently published works and a series of interviews conducted by the author with premises/facilities managers.

The paper discusses the need for organisationally specific cost models which follow a uniform taxonomy and protocol for all premises related expenditure. Such bespoke models will be flexible enough to be tailored to particular organisational requirements whilst conforming to a common coding and classification.

The paper presents the development of the Occupancy Cost Data Model (O.C.D.M.). This model delivers the structural framework for the taxonomy for coding and classification of an organisations premises related expenditure. The O.C.D.M. is now being used as the framework for the development of the Occupancy Cost Forecasting Model (O.C.F.M.) with potential uses such as assisting the forecasting of budgets for recently procured premises, cost comparison exercises, and as a general financial planning tool for property management.