BOMA International & ASHRAE Offer Workplace Anti-Viral Guidance

The Building Owners and Managers Association and ASHRAE offer advice to facility and property managers to help protect occupants from viral threats. The advice is particularly relevant to Pacific Rim states like California, where state government has declared a State of Emergency to help deal with the pandemic-level coronavirus threat.

BOMA's Advice for Facility & Property Managers

• Clean surfaces and items that are most likely to be touched frequently with the cleaning agents usually used for those surfaces and items. Additional disinfection beyond routine cleaning is not recommended.

• Talk with companies that provide your property or portfolio with contract or temporary employees about the importance of staying home when sick and encourage them to develop non-punitive leave policies.

• Do not require a healthcare provider’s note for employees who are sick with acute respiratory illness to validate their illness or to return to work, as healthcare provider offices and medical facilities may be extremely busy and not able to provide such documentation in a timely manner.

• Ensure your staff sick leave policies are flexible and consistent with public health guidance and that your employees are aware of these policies.

• Purchase supplies, such as tissues, soap, and alcohol-based hand cleaners to encourage healthful habits in the workplace. w Engage your state and local health departments to confirm channels of communication and methods for dissemination of local outbreak information.

• Review your company's current pandemic flu plan or develop a new plan. Involve your employees in development and review of the plan. Familiarize yourself with the plan and share it and policies with your employees.

• Develop flexible leave policies to allow employees to stay home to care for sick family members or for children, especially if schools dismiss students or childcare programs close.

• Plan for how business can continue if many employees must stay home. Designate and train other employees in the event someone becomes sick to make sure you can continue your critical functions.

• Identify essential business functions and critical elements within your supply chains required to maintain operations. Plan for how buildings will operate if there is an increase in absenteeism or supply chains are interrupted. w Cross-train personnel to perform essential functions so that buildings can operate if key staff members are absent.

• Consider flexible worksites or flexible work hours to increase physical distance between employees.

• Ensure you have the IT infrastructure necessary to support multiple employees who may be able to work from home. w Teams with portfolios containing properties in more than one market are encouraged to provide local managers with the authority to take appropriate actions outlined in their business infectious disease outbreak response plan based on the condition in each locality.

• Distribute educational literature about prevention. Literature can be found under the "Protect Yourself" section of the World Health Organization's page about coronavirus.

• Provide resources and a work environment that promotes hand washing and covering coughs and sneezes. Provide tissues, no-touch trash cans, hand soap, and alcohol-based hand cleaner.

• Offer education on hand washing and covering coughs and sneezes in an easy-to-understand format.

ASHRAE Advises Better Indoor Air Quality Safeguards

The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) says that new and existing healthcare intake and waiting areas, crowded shelters, and similar facilities should go beyond the minimum requirements of these documents, using techniques covered in ASHRAE’s Indoor Air Quality Guide to be even better prepared to control airborne infectious disease (including a future pandemic caused by a new infectious agent).

Because small particles remain airborne for some period of time, the design and operation of HVAC systems that move air can affect disease transmission in several ways, such as by the following:

• Supplying clean air to susceptible occupants w Containing contaminated air and/or exhausting it to the outdoors

• Diluting the air in a space with cleaner air from outdoors and/or by filtering the air w Cleaning the air within the room

ASHRAE recommends the following strategies of interest to address disease transmission: dilution ventilation, laminar and other in-room flow regimes, differential room pressurization, personalized ventilation, source capture ventilation, filtration (central or unitary), and UVGI (upper room, in-room, and in the airstream). Owners, operators, and engineers are encouraged to collaborate with infection prevention specialists knowledgeable about transmission of infection in the community and the workplace and about strategies for prevention and risk mitigation. For access to the full position document, standards, publications, technical committees, research projects and other material to prepare for COVID-19, visit the ASHRAE COVID-19 Preparedness Resources webpage at ashrae.org/COVID19.