Unlocking the power of digital tools to plan a safe return to the office

As the coronavirus crisis seemingly abates in the UK, there is mounting pressure on employers to reopen workspaces, with Prime Minister Boris Johnson last month publicly urging employees to return to their offices. While progress has thus far been slow, the number of returning staff has nonetheless been steadily rising. Questions of safety in corporate spaces are consequently of paramount concern to employers, commercial property owners, developers and tenants alike.

There remains much uncertainty around transmission mechanisms of the virus but the principle of maintaining physical distance between people is unanimously accepted. Addressing the UK science and technology select committee, the UK government’s chief scientific adviser, Patrick Vallance, recently reiterated this point, stressing that distancing measures must continue to be upheld.

The issue of the optimum number of people who can safely occupy a space is one that many organisations must now face. In the early stages of the return to office when dealing with limited numbers, this question can be addressed with pragmatic approaches to capacity developed by in-house FM teams. However, as staff numbers progressively return to normal levels and government guidance evolves, the situation is likely to become more complex and the risks potentially higher.

Thankfully, help is at hand. There are a range of digital data-driven tools that hold the key to surmounting these key challenges, which can be harnessed to reshape office space, laboratories, retail spaces or indeed, any other venue where people congregate. An example of such apparatus is Arup’s Space Explorer tool, which combines the power of crowd simulation with data and spatial analysis.

These methods allow architects to replicate an existing layout at speed and test against several scenarios that can optimise the use of desk space, or re-plan them to maximise occupation. Adjustments can be deployed quickly using generative techniques which can establish the greatest capacity possible within government regulations. The location of business units and teams on the floor can also be tested and their placement reconfigured using iterative mathematical optimisation. This way, potential issues of physical day-to-day iterations between teams can be mitigated.

Crowd simulation is another invaluable asset for planning the reopening of office space. Simulations allow for mapping proximity where breaches of social distancing rules are unavoidable, for example along circulation routes and in lobbies. While this cannot always be mitigated, improvement can often be made by reconfiguring furniture layout and introducing one-way systems.

Understanding the length of queues that can safely be accommodated in office reception spaces is also critical to the reopening of tall buildings, where lift capacity will be reduced with social distancing and management of temperature checks is required. Here, landlords may need to reconfigure the spaces and potentially ask their tenants to arrive in the morning in a phased manner.

Most significantly, digital analysis can highlight areas of disproportionately high exposure, which are often adjacent to aisles and can be difficult to spot. Such analysis can help the senior management of an organisation engage with their colleagues around the measures taken to ensure their workplace is as safe as possible.

Maintaining safe workplaces is a multifaceted task with many other elements beyond physical distancing, such as the use of masks. The implications of the virus outbreak continue to develop the more that scientists learn. For now, however, spatial analysis and crowd simulation can help employers, commercial property owners and others to implement safe arrangements in workspaces. Moreover, the value of these tools will undoubtedly exist beyond the pandemic, giving clients insight into how their staff interact, thus helping to model the office space of the future.