- August 3, 2021
- Posted by: sibservices
- Category: facility management, Facility Management Company, Facility Management Services, Integrated Facility Management, Integrated Facility Management Companies in India, Integrated Facility Service Provider
After the devastating impact of the deadly second COVID-19 wave, we can now see cases of COVID-19 are declining in different parts of the world. As a result, people hope to get back to normalcy as many organizations, shopping malls, and other commercial spaces are gradually reopening.
While many corporate sectors, offices and commercial agencies plan for an eventual transition so that their employees, workers and customers can return safely, there is still a variety of questions about their safety arising. Given the suspected airborne nature of this highly contagious virus, corporate companies, shopping malls, and other commercial space owners have contacted the facility management agencies to make the necessary modifications.
In such a scenario, facility management companies have a lot on their plates. They need to ensure the COVID-19 safety protocols are maintained in these places, especially before the full workforce is attempting to return.
As organizations around the world are keener to open their workplaces, they are taking all necessary preventive steps with the help of facility management services to ensure the health and safety of their employees, clients, visitors and everyone around.
Let’s take a look at 5 essential steps followed by integrated facility management services for these places:
1. Contactless Touch Points
One common factor in increasing safety in commercial places, offices and malls is reducing touchpoints between people and objects. Hence, it has become the key strategy for the facility management company to incorporate contactless access control solutions in their facilities.
How do touchless access control solutions work?
- Enabling touchless entry to doors, facilities, lifts and more
- Minimizing personal interactions in lobbies and visitor management
- Pre-entry wellness check at the building entrances, lobbies or first point of contact
- Limiting capacities to elevators to avoid the crowd
Minimizing touchpoints like doors, lifts, and lobbies is an effective step for preventing the spread of the virus in workplaces and commercial areas.
2. Building Management and Sanitization
There are additional safety protocols your business needs to take to provide a safer work environment for your employees. That’s why you should rely on a facility management service provider that implements additional COVID-19 reopening maintenance procedures as follows:
- Scheduling daily cleaning and disinfection of the building, especially to all high-touch surfaces such as door handles, light switches, desks, phones and faucets
- Thorough cleaning and disinfecting surfaces with the most use in public places such as PIN pads, point-of-sale keypads and shopping carts
- Proper use of sanitization followed by dilution method by housekeeping & janitorial services that can mitigate the spread of the virus
- Increasing the frequency of routine deep cleaning and sanitization by housekeepers
- Real-time tracking of visitors for optimal building security
Frequent cleaning, disinfection by housekeeping & janitorial services are immediate steps to be followed once offices, malls and business places reopen.
3. Conducting Workplace Vaccination Drives
Post-COVID scenario, the integrated facility management services are expected to play a bigger role. Now, they ensure the security of office buildings and commercial spaces and conduct vaccination drives in workplaces.
Organizations have come forward to run vaccination camps to ensure that all their employees will be vaccinated. Hence, they tie-up with major hospitals and ask the facility management services to organize vaccination camps at the earliest in different days.
As a result, many employees and their families can get vaccinated without visiting overcrowded hospitals. Moreover, these integrated facility service providers follow the norms of social distancing while coordinating the entire tasks of vaccination drives.
Facility management agencies are conducting numerous vaccination camps for corporate industries tying up with major hospitals, which is highly applaudable.
4. Adding Higher Levels of Filtration to Avoid Transmission
Although there are still controversies on the airborne transmission capacity of Coronavirus, ventilation and recirculation of air are essential to workplaces and commercial buildings with so many people. Facility management companies often look after ventilation and filtration systems as part of their property maintenance tasks.
Hence, they are incorporating a few upgraded steps to increase the air quality of indoor spaces like offices, malls, commercial buildings.
- Checking the ventilation system with outdoor air to dilute airborne contaminants and decrease transmission rates
- Opening windows to let more outdoor air for building without HVAC systems
- Installing high-efficiency particulate air filters to remove dust, bacteria, vapour and fungi
- Cleaning and maintaining of air filtration system to reduce particulate concentration for indoor air
Commercial places and offices should incorporate high-efficiency particulate air filters, which need to be maintained by facility management services to ensure high-level air quality.
5. Infrastructural Renovation to Promote Health and Wellness
Facility managers and corporate real estate leaders are now working together to ensure safety measures in several workplaces. Some organizations have opted for infrastructure renovations to encourage their employees for return-to-work. Others also prefer to do small face-lists.
Some of the major steps taken by organizations and implemented by facility management companies are:
- Dedicating separate rooms for visitors and deliveries
- Installing signage and floor graphics to instruct where and how employees should move through the facilities
- Rearranging workstations with more social distancing
- Reconstructing restroom and washroom areas to minimize surface contacts
- Adding handwashing signs to remind everyone to follow
Along with several safety measure steps, facility management agencies should work collaboratively with construction companies to make some renovations – be it small face-lifts or significant changes to building a safe and healthy workplace.
Key Takeaways
It goes without saying that healthy and safe buildings play a vital role in creating a safe, healthy and virus-free world. Apart from the steps mentioned above, everyday precautions and consciousness among individuals such as social distancing, masking up and sanitizing have an essential role in fighting against this virus.
Most integrated facility management companies in India have come forward with full-proof strategies to combat such a situation. If you are worried about the health and safety of yourself or your employees, it’s high time to work with a reliable facility management service provider like S&IB. It will increase the safety, productivity and efficiency of your commercial or workplace with care.