The Next Normal in a Post-Pandemic Workspace

Whether your office has already partially returned to work or you’re planning a workplace reentry, one thing is certain—things may never be the same. Safe facility management during an unprecedented pandemic requires a high level of planning and precaution. The measures you implement should increase employee productivity, promote workplace trust, and most importantly, keep employees and customers safe.

Rule and Regulation Compliance

It’s not always easy to keep up with new regulations, especially with constantly changing guidelines. Regardless, the first priority is employee safety. In most nations, employers are encouraged to provide a safe working environment. Physical safety should be a constant for all employees, but some may tolerate risk better than others. It’s wise to consider your most vulnerable employees when creating a return-to-work plan, but determine strategies with everyone in mind.

Second, keep employees informed of changes and guidelines. Assign staff to monitor local conditions and guidelines, then share updates on a consistent schedule. Keep a global perspective and adjust plans as needed to comply with local requirements.

Third, align business priorities with global realities. Inspect your building for potential hazards and determine remediation costs. Be willing to remodel, reconfigure, or rearrange everything including work schedules, walls, and seating arrangements.

Masking, Sanitation, and Social Distancing

Most official guidelines center on three principles—masking, sanitation, and social distancing. Depending on your industry, some guidelines may present more of a challenge than others. Restrictions will change as the coronavirus threat diminishes or increases, so keep long-term needs in mind when investing in safety equipment.

Personal protective equipment (PPE) requirements can vary depending on the role. There’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to PPE. Some employees may not be able to wear masks. Others may need to avoid the workplace altogether, such as employees with asthma or other respiratory conditions.

Employees want clean workplaces, even more so now under COVID-19. Make sanitation a priority by setting up hygiene stations with hand sanitizer, soap, gloves, and disinfecting wipes. The typical weekly office cleanings may not be enough. Consider hiring extra cleaning staff to more frequently clean bathrooms, break areas, and shared spaces like conference rooms and lounges.

PPE isn’t limited to individual employees. Plexiglass shields provide an additional layer of protection around pinch points where social distancing may be a challenge, such as reception areas, entrances and exits, and payment areas. Posted policies and directional signage are great visual reminders for customers and employees to abide by your workplace precautions.

Other measures such as UV lights and thermal scanners are options for combating COVID-19 but should be part of an overall workplace health and safety strategy. It’s wise to check with locally, regionally, and country-specific requirements to determine what’s feasible for your team to manage.

Technology and Real Estate Optimization

For most workplaces, safety decisions center around official guidelines. Maintaining six feet of distance helps protect people from breathing in infected air particles. However, this is easier said than done for many businesses.

Social distance guidelines vary by country and region. In the U.S., 6 feet is the standard; the World Health Organization recommends 1 meter. Social distancing may reduce workplace capacity, depending on your current seating configuration, plan density, desk sharing, and other factors. The potential for space loss raises some interesting options:

  • Should some individuals work remotely forever? Can we stagger work schedules? Do we need to let some staff go?
  • Should we purchase or rent additional office space or retrofit the space we have? Should we consider moving? Should we renegotiate the terms of our lease?
  • How can we prepare our workplace for future emergencies?

During the pandemic, many business leaders are leveraging real estate planning software to visualize coronavirus-related changes to seating arrangements, staff schedules, and office remodeling before committing time and money to wholesale changes. For example, hoteling software helps maximize seating efficiency using dynamic data such as HR information and floor maps.

Business owners can require that employees reserve a hotel desk prior to coming to work and show the reservation before they’re allowed to enter. After someone uses the hotel desk, facility management can be notified that the area must be cleaned and sanitized before another reservation can be made.

The Next Normal is Now

Reopening your workplace can be difficult. Regulations are constantly changing and there’s no saying when COVID-19 will ease. The post-pandemic “next normal” requires flexibility and adaptability. Desks, rooms, and entire floors may not function the same way. Previous policies for remote work, sick leave, and work schedules may need to be reevaluated in the new work environment.

You can’t foresee every situation, but you can be flexible in establishing your new normal. Employees will appreciate your efforts as they return to their former—though newly arranged—workspaces.

By Nai Kanell
Vice President of Marketing
SpaceIQ

About IMS Consulting
For more than a decade, IMS Consulting has delivered the full scope of Archibus- related services to both government and commercial clients. As a Virginia Certified Small Business, IM犀利士
S Consulting provides our clients with personalized attention by experienced Archibus certified consultants. Our experts work with our clients to thoroughly understand how they do business, identify their unique needs, pinpoint opportunities to better manage their infrastructure, employ more efficient work processes, and make smarter capital budgeting decisions—both today and over the long term.

IMS Consulting specializes in the implementation of Archibus, the #1 real estate, infrastructure & facilities management solution in the world. Archibus is the global leader in streamlining how you manage your real estate, infrastructure, and facilities. Centralize your data, planning, and operations onto one seamless platform backed by 35 years of innovation and the world’s largest support network. Reduce costs, enhance sustainability, and create a better workplace by transforming how you connect with people, places, and processes.

Webinar – What’s New In Archibus v.25.4

 

Archibus understands that bringing your employees back to the office safely is a priority. That is why they continue to add features that will help you do so.

In Archibus V25.4, they have added the ability for facility managers to:

– Limit bookings on any floor to reduced capacity targets
– Restrict hoteling of desks after capacity is reached
– Limit users from booking more than once for the same period

Other features introduced in this latest release include the ability to:

– Create user-defined fields for equipment and equipment standards
– Access checklists in the Maintenance Console
– Manage and update move projects with an easy-to-use interface

Archibus v.25.4 - IMS Consulting

Our On-Demand webinar dives deeper into what’s new in Archibus v.25.4.

For more information about Archibus v.25.4 contact IMS Consulting: hello@ims.consulting or find us online at http://ims.consulting Connect with us on LinkedIn.

About IMS Consulting
For more than a decade, IMS Consulting has delivered the full scope of ARCHIBUS-related services to both government and commercial clients. As a Virginia Certified Small Business, IMS Consulting provides our clients with personalized attention by experienced ARCHIBUS certified consultants. Our experts work with our clients to thoroughly understand how they do business, identify their unique needs, and pinpoint opportunities to better manage their infrastructure, employ more efficient work processes, and make smarter capital budgeting decisions—both today and over the long term.

IMS Consulting specializes in the implementation of ARCHIBUS, the #1 real estate, infrastructure & facilities management solution in the world. ARCHIBUS is the global leader in streamlining how you manage your real estate, infrastructure, and facilities. Centralize your data, planning, and operations onto one seamless platform backed by 35 years of innovation and the world’s largest support network. Reduce costs, enhance sustainability, and 日本藤素
create a better workplace by transforming how you connect with people, places, and processes.

2 Minute Drill – Hoteling Application v.25

2 Minute Drill – Hoteling Application v.25

 

When workers — whether they are on a temporary contract, typically telecommute, or are employees temporarily displaced from their offices and requiring swing space– arrive at the site, their first immediate action is to go to their assigned workspace so that they can settle into the day’s work.

Ensuring that these workers have an office or workspace to go to, that this office is equipped to meet their needs, and that the employee is notified of their assigned space can be accomplished through the Archibus Hoteling application and its tasks to create and manage the Hoteling process. From the administration and cost side, the Archibus Hoteling application supports charging departments for their use of temporarily occupied seats, assessing the utilization of booked seats, and helping you to determine if you have enough seats dedicated to the Hoteling process.

The Archibus Hoteling application is organized into a set of role-based tasks designed for the various roles within your organization. With roles and security established by a business process owner, users will log into Archibus and access just those tasks appropriate for their roles and security settings.

For more information about these offers contact IMS Consulting: hello@ims.consulting or find us online at http://ims.consulting Connect with us on LinkedIn.

About IMS Consulting
For more than a decade, IMS Consulting has delivered the full scope of ARCHIBUS-related services to both government and commercial clients. As a Virginia Certified Small Business, IMS Consulting provides our clients with personalized attention by experienced ARCHIBUS certified consultants. Our experts work with our clients to thoroughly understand how they do business, identify their unique needs, and pinpoint opportunities to better manage their infrastructure, employ more efficient work processes, and make smarter capital budgeting decisions—both today and over the long term.

IMS Consulting specializes in the implementation of ARCHIBUS, the #1 real estate, infrastructure & facilities management solution in the world. ARCHIBUS is the global leader in streamlining how you manage your real estate, infrastructure, and facilities. Centralize your data, planning, and operations onto one seamless platform backed by 35 years of innovation and the world’s largest support network. Reduce costs, enhance sustainability, and create a better workplace by transforming how you connect with people, places, and processes.

Technology Drives Safer Back-to-School Efforts

What is your new student capacity under social distancing?

This simple question can flummox even the most seasoned campus planner or school district facilities specialist. Many smaller universities and larger school districts don’t have a ready way to access this information, which can complicate efforts to ensure a safe school year.

With an integrated workplace management system (IWMS), education leaders can uncover important insights about their space inventory. This data empowers schools to quickly identify, modify, and repurpose square footage to satisfy COVID guidelines while supporting student learning needs.

Archibus Back To School

Establish Usable Square Footage

Understanding revised building and classroom capacity based on COVID-19 impacts is a unique challenge. It’s not a simple mathematical formula run on a spreadsheet. Space planners need to aggregate data from multiple buildings across an entire district or campus. Educational leaders depend on accurate insights in order to safely bring back students—yet many do not have a system that can collect and analyze this important information.

The process starts with establishing a precise overview of your school’s space inventory. You need to know what type of space you have, how much square footage it contains, where it is located, and its condition. Even the American College Health Association (ACHA) recommends ascertaining “allowable occupancy in order to control workflow and/or establish maximum attendance.” But without being able to view space inventory in an easy-to-digest format, schooler planners have a difficult time implementing social distancing.

And it’s not just classroom spaces—schools are appropriating rooms that were once gathering areas and turning them into learning zones. Ancillary areas like gymnasiums, auditoriums, theater stages, and music rooms are prime spots to spread out students. Even a cafeteria can be transformed into a classroom under these circumstances. This strategy is echoed by the ACHA, which encourages schools to “post maximum occupancy in common break areas and configure to accommodate appropriate physical distancing.” This information is not only essential for applying physical distancing but also tracking areas that require sterilization and disinfection.

Real-World Education Applications

Bob Lawn, a CAFM Specialist with California’s Long Beach Unified School District, oversees 87 sites. His experience implementing social distancing underscores some of the unexpected complications that can arise. His department used a 20% reduction of classroom capacity to account for shelving, cabinets, etc. and estimate the usable classroom space across the district, which resulted in a decrease of students from 30 to 16. To gain a more accurate percentage, he calculated each room’s usable square footage by subtracting space occupied by woodwork, desks, and shelves.

“By making the necessary calculations in Archibus, we established that each student needs 46 square feet. That’s when we had to start thinking about alternative spaces beyond traditional classrooms. So we ran an analysis for spaces over 100 square feet to give us a new list of learning areas to work with,” Lawn explained.

Michael Chambers, a design and construction project manager for St. John’s University, ran into the same challenge of calculating class capacity. He stresses that it’s not enough to assume seat count will be reduced by a fixed 30%. For example, an architectural feature like a column could easily affect the layout.

“We also needed to locate all common spaces on campus, especially since they will likely be empty through the fall. Using the [Archibus] Space Console solution, we could determine if those areas have the appropriate infrastructure, such as HVAC and electric, to accommodate a classroom or online learning resource,” said Chambers.

Locate and Mitigate Hot Spots

In addition to classrooms, COVID-19 is forcing modifications for faculty and support staff spaces. Everything from break rooms and reception areas to benching and shared offices need to be scrutinized for exposure risks. It is imperative to quickly identify where people are in close quarters and what solutions can reduce risk in these hot spots.

For example, new features in Archibus V25.2 allow users to put a 6-foot radius around each desk to determine where there are conflicts. This provides an accurate list of people who need to be moved. In many cases, layout modifications aren’t feasible because campus space is already near capacity pre-COVID.

“Based on the insights from Archibus, we decided to implement shift schedules for departments,” Chambers explained. “We classify spaces as essential, reservable, and work shifts. Now we have reservable spaces for touchdown spots, rotating schedules, and everyday seats.”

Both Chambers and Lawn leveraged data from an IWMS to run space scenarios. Without this type of software, however, they would be forced to use spreadsheets, manual measurements, and other cumbersome methods—none of which ultimately provide the critical insights schools are depending on to modify their layouts.

“These tools are allowing us to solve needs,” Chambers stressed. “This has been essential to us feeling prepared and ready to welcome faculty, students, and admin back to some form of normal. We can leverage our data to answer and solve tough questions in preparation for reopening.”

By Ian Morley
Chief Product Officer
SpaceIQ

Track COVID-19 with Archibus Health and Safety

COVID-19 in 1.9 Minutes: how to track and contain incidents with Archibus.

The first step that a company should take when encountering exposure to COVID-19 (coronavirus) is to report the incident and contain it as quickly as possible. The WMA strongly re日本藤素 commends that clients use the Archibus Health and Safety application for this step because it was built for reporting health and safety incidents to the proper managers and personnel as quickly and efficiently as possible.

What is Archibus Health and Safety? Which features can help my organization?

The EH&S module provides facilities professionals with the ability to track workplace incidents, create work requests around these, alert employees to preventive measures being practiced by their organization, and report to any regulatory organizations that need to be notified.

One of Archibus’ core strengths is that it is designed with inter-connectivity in mind. Inputting data in the initial “Report an Incident” feature within Archibus H&S will lead the user to more detailed views and actions, like automatically filling out OSHA forms, generating a service request ticket, or updating the medical monitoring status for an employee. In this way, your organization can put an emphasis on workplace safety and safety management, keeping employees healthy and at ease.

Report an Incident

Show the importance of health and safety in the workplace, and report important details of a health or safety incident. Track the date, where it took place, and who was involved: this can include employees and non-employees, such as delivery people, visitors, animals, etc.

Users can also identify the incident category. Categories can be as general or specific as your organization chooses. Something like “coronavirus” is quite specific. Users can also provide an incident description, such as “showing signs of the coronavirus”, “diagnosed with the coronavirus”, “high temperature”, etc.

Track an Incident

The report form discussed above is really intended to lead users into more detailed actions in the module, mostly under the “Track Incident” feature. This feature uses the general incident information from the report and takes it to a greater level of detail through various views. It also allows users to take important action within their organization’s workplace safety management plan. Some particularly useful actions are:

  • viewing incident details initially entered in the report.
  • redlining the location of the incident.
  • generating a service request.
  • entering any medical responses to the incident.
  • filling out and attaching documents associated with the incident, such as OSHA forms.

This is an especially useful feature for managers who will be overseeing incident responses, preventive measures, and aftermath procedures.

Incident Details

This displays the initial details of the incident from the incident report form and lets users add more details about the incident, such as:

  • the specific time it took place.
  • which manager was involved.
  • who recorded the incident.
  • injury code.
  • whether a chemical or substance was involved.
  • activity before injury, or (what task an injured employee was performing before they were injured).

Watch the video below at 00:30 to see an Archibus Health and Safety software demonstration of Incident Details.


1 Learn about Incident Details at 00:30.

Site Information

See where the incident took place, and, if necessary, indicate the location with a redline on your organization’s drawings so others, such as craftspeople, janitorial staff, managers, and employees, can view its location. Users may submit the redlined drawing as an incident document so it appears with other attached documents. Follow environmental health and safety guidelines by maintaining clean facilities that are up to standards.

Watch the video below at 1:14 to see an Archibus Health and Safety software demonstration of Site Information.


2 Learn about Site Information at 1:14.

Medical Information

Enter and track any medical information, such as whether anyone was admitted to the emergency room or hospital, which facility they went to, who their attending physician was, and any medical results, such as full recovery, still recovering, or death. Further medical monitoring is possible under “Incident Response”.

Watch the video below at 2:09 to see an Archibus Health and Safety software demonstration of Medical Information.


3 Learn about Medical Information at 2:09.

Incident Response

Located under “Track Incidents”, “Incident Response” is an essential step in the incident reporting process. From this view, several important actions can be taken, such as generating a service request ticket, additional medical monitoring, and assigning work restrictions. This is arguably one of the most important features in ARCHIBUS Health and Safety.

Watch the video below at 2:39 to see an Archibus Health and Safety software demonstration of Incident Response.


4 Learn about Incident Response at 2:39.

Medical Monitoring

Additional medical monitoring in H&S can promote safety awareness and lets users input and track how long someone will be monitored, assigns a tracking number, and update the status of the individual or any test results that may be pending.

Work Restrictions

Assign special work restrictions to individuals, such as “working from home” in the case of the coronavirus. Set a time period for the restriction, track how many workdays were lost, and determine whether the restriction is temporary or permanent. Help everyone how to improve safety awareness in the workplace.

Watch the video below at 4:09 to see an Archibus Health and Safety software demonstration of Incident Response.


5 Learn about Work Restrictions at 4:09.

Employee Training

Assign a training program for employees to strengthen your organization’s workplace safety program. In the case of COVID-19 , users may wish to assign an employee a hand-washing class, a training on hygienic practices while sick or to prevent sickness, or provide a program to teach people best practices to prevent to sickness. Record when the training was completed. Help employees learn how to create a safe and healthy workplace.

Metrics

Create metrics that will appear on your Health and Safety dashboard around any statistics or data your organization desires to track. Show, with real data, the importance of health and safety in the workplace. This could be days of work lost, employees who are working from home, how many cases of the coronavirus have occurred within the organization, and much more. Help decision makers learn how to improve health and safety performance by creating alerts that will send out emails or notifications to key people or the entire organization. Metrics and alerts are completely customizable to each organization.

Incidents Map

View a global portfolio on an interactive map of where and how many times incidents of the same type have occurred. This is a quick and effective way to find specific details about where health and safety incidents have taken place, how many have occurred in the workplace within certain floors, rooms, buildings, campuses, etc.

Incidents Log and Pre-formatted OSHA Reports

Under the Incidents Log, users can leverage the data already entered for an incident to automatically fill in an OSHA report form, utilizing the role of the Gin industrial safety.

The WMA has seen great success from our clients who use this module, and we hope that your organization, too, can discover how to improve health and safety in the workplace by leveraging the powerful features in the ARCHIBUS Environmental Health & Safety module. If you have more questions, we are available to demo the software. Contact us to find out more about the H&S module, find ideas to promote safety in the workplace, and bring your organization’s work environment to full health!

                          Meet the Workplace Maven Alliance

The WMA is an alliance of Archibus business partners who are dedicated to finding the best IWMS solution for their clients. Formed in April of 2020, the group consists of: