Study: Safely Reopening Office Buildings Will Require Planning, Innovation

Share on Facebook
Share on Twitter
Share on
LinkedIn
+

Managers need to enable efficient operations, follow social distancing guidelines

BOSTON – Safely bringing employees back into workplaces presents a significant challenge for employers located in office buildings, particularly when it comes to elevator operations and building entry and exit.  To address the challenge, managers must develop plans to control the flow of workers, according to a new study published by Pioneer Institute.

“Balancing necessary social distancing guidelines and the need for employees to efficiently access offices will require innovation and careful planning,” said Rebekah Paxton, author of “Going Up: The Challenge of Reopening Shared Office Buildings in a COVID-19 World.”

May 25 was the official opening date for most Massachusetts office buildings—albeit with considerable conditions set forth in government guidance documents, while Boston buildings reopen on June 1.

Looking internationally, the One Canada Square building in London anticipates it can accommodate the expected volume of tenants and guests by moving up to 7,500 people per hour.  To do so, building managers have developed a system of designated doorless entry and exit to the building, elevators operated by PPE-equipped staff, and an estimated four-to-six-person elevator occupancy limit.

One Canada Square, with its 32 elevators that serve 50 floors, underscores a challenge for some of Boston’s most iconic properties. Boston’s Prudential Tower, for example, has 18 elevators serving 52 floors, according to a database compiled by The Skyscraper Center.  This may result in bottlenecks in the time of COVID-19.

Massachusetts’ reopening guidelines call for a limit of 25 percent of maximum workplace occupancy to limit the number of people entering office buildings and minimize back-ups in hallways, stairwells and elevator banks.  State recommendations specific to general office buildings advise managers and employees to “minimize use of confined spaces (i.e. elevators) by more than one individual at a time.” On Friday, May 29, the City of Boston released a “Return to Workplace Framework for Commercial Spaces,” which encompasses existing guidelines provided by the state for office buildings, and additionally limits elevator capacity to no more than four individuals at a time.

Employers are also developing a range of ways to manage reopening challenges.  Qualtrics, which has 25 offices across the United States, is identifying volunteers to take the stairs.  New York City-based Interpublic is taping social distancing blocks on elevator floors to show how many people can safely ride at once.  But a company official cautioned that this would translate to “two-to-three hours” to get all employees to their desks at one Interpublic location.

Technology can help address the challenge, and the report highlights examples of how various technologies can help facilitate the safe movement of individuals in multi-story buildings.  For example, Otis, an elevator technology company in London, provides apps that allow customers to call elevators with smartphones. QLess, a California-based app developer, provides apps that facilitate remote line formation, where users can be given an elevator wait time, during which they can be outside the lobby or even in their cars.

For social distancing and workplace efficiency to coexist successfully, Paxton urges that all those who can work from home continue to do so, and that employers implement flexible in-office days and staggered scheduling for those needing to access physical offices.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rebekah Paxton is a Research Analyst at Pioneer Institute. She first joined Pioneer in 2017 as a Roger Perry intern, writing about various transparency issues within the Commonwealth, including fiscal policy and higher education. Since then, she has worked on various research projects under PioneerPublic and PioneerOpportunity, in areas of state finance, public policy, and labor relations. She recently earned an M.A. in Political Science and a B.A. in Political Science and Economics, from Boston University, where she graduated summa cum laude.

ABOUT PIONEER

Mission

Pioneer Institute develops and communicates dynamic ideas that advance prosperity and a vibrant civic life in Massachusetts and beyond.

Vision

Success for Pioneer is when the citizens of our state and nation prosper and our society thrives because we enjoy world-class options in education, healthcare, transportation and economic opportunity, and when our government is limited, accountable and transparent.

Values

Pioneer believes that America is at its best when our citizenry is well-educated, committed to liberty, personal responsibility, and free enterprise, and both willing and able to test their beliefs based on facts and the free exchange of ideas.

Get Our COVID-19 News, Tips & Resources!

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Related Posts

The Republic of Gadgets – America’s Great Inventors – 25 Resources for K-12 Education

Understanding the enduring public and private benefit that great inventors and their contraptions have made to our civilization is to better appreciate the connections between human necessity, creativity, and ingenuity. Yet, in American K-12 education very little focus is placed on studying who America’s great inventors were and the central role they’ve played in shaping our republic of gadgets. We’re offering a variety of links on the topic for parents, teachers, and schoolchildren to enjoy and better realize authentic innovators.

Cheryl Brown Henderson, Daughter of Lead Plaintiff in Brown v. Board of Ed., on Race & Schooling

/
This week on “The Learning Curve,” Cara and Gerard are joined by Cheryl Brown Henderson, president of the Brown Foundation for Educational Equity, Excellence, and Research. She shares her experience as the daughter of the lead plaintiff in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, and thoughts on how the historic decision contributed to advancing civil rights in our country.

The Houses of Great American Writers – 25 Resources for K-12 Education

According to the Brookings Institution research, teaching great fiction is declining across America’s K-12 education system, so we’re offering resources to help parents, teachers, and schoolchildren to better appreciate great American writers and the places where they wrote.

Getting Nursing Home Care Right

Pioneer Institute has long recognized that seniors deserve the best of care and that innovative policy solutions are necessary to ensure that this population enjoys a high quality of life in their later years. In the 1990s, early 2000s and most recently in 2017, the Institute dedicated Better Government Competition topics to policy issues related to aging in America. Our goal each time was to find solutions and to take advantage of new innovations that would improve the quality of life and care for the elderly.

Harvard PEPG’s Prof. Paul Peterson on Charter Schools, Digital Learning, & Ed Next Polling

This week on “The Learning Curve,” Cara and Gerard are joined by Paul Peterson, the Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Government and Director of the Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard University.

Small Business Life Support: Policy Relief for Firms Sickened by COVID?

/
Host Joe Selvaggi talks with Pioneer Institute’s Andrew Mikula and Retailers Association of Massachusetts' Jon Hurst about the state of small business in Massachusetts six months into the pandemic.

A Commonwealth of Art – 20 Resources for K-12 Art Education

In Pioneer’s ongoing series of blogs here, here, here, and here on curricular resources for parents, families, and teachers during COVID-19, this one focuses on: Introducing K-12 schoolchildren to great works of art about, from, or in Massachusetts. Great Massachusetts paintings, folk, and fine arts are often not fully explored in the Bay State’s K-12 education system, so we’re offering a variety of resources to help parents, teachers, and schoolchildren.

Award-Winning Writer Brenda Wineapple on the 170th Anniv. of The Scarlet Letter & Pres. Andrew Johnson’s Impeachment

/
This week on “The Learning Curve,” Cara and Gerard are joined by Brenda Wineapple, author of the award-winning Hawthorne: A Life and The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation. They discuss her definitive biography of Nathaniel Hawthorne and the 170th anniversary of the publication of his classic novel, The Scarlet Letter.

Study: Economic Recovery from COVID Will Require Short-Term Relief, Long-Term Reforms

As the initial economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic has slowed, a new study from Pioneer Institute finds that governments must continue to provide short-term relief to stabilize small businesses as they simultaneously consider longer-term reforms to hasten and bolster recovery – all while facing a need to shore up public sector revenues.

International Best-Seller Dr. Jung Chang On Wild Swans, Mao’s Tyranny, & Modern China

/
This week on “The Learning Curve,” Cara and Gerard are joined by Dr. Jung Chang, author of the best-selling books Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China; Mao: The Unknown Story; and Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister: Three Women at the Heart of Twentieth-Century China.

“Architecture is Frozen Music” Great Massachusetts Buildings – 25 Resources for K-12 Education

Understanding enduring public and private architecture is a key way to learn about art, ideas, and how they harmonize with our democracy. Yet, Massachusetts buildings are often never discussed in K-12 education. We’re offering a variety of links about outstanding houses and architecture across the Bay State for parents, teachers, and schoolchildren to enjoy, visit, and better appreciate, including:

COVID-19 Transparency – A Step Backwards

/
Massachusetts has unfortunately taken the backwards step of ending its longstanding daily reporting of something basic and important: the virus’s cumulative impact on various age groups.