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The Practice Management Knowledge Community (PMKC) identifies and develops information on the business of architecture for use by the profession to maintain and improve the quality of the professional and business environment.  The PMKC initiates programs, provides content and serves as a resource to other knowledge communities, and acts as experts on AIA Institute programs and policies that pertain to a wide variety of business practices and trends.

    

  • 1.  Return To the office - Next Steps?

    Posted 05-26-2020 12:05 AM
    Hello Everyone,

    As we started looking into starting a new phase in the fight against Covid-19, a lot of firms are considering new measures to re-open their offices back whether fully or partially, I'm very interested in the discussion and knowledge sharing regarding strategies and logistics for returning back to business without sacrificing people's health and safety.

    Some firms already did surveys to measure and understand people's feelings and concerns related to the topic,
    • Did your Firm do A survey?
    • How did people feel about returning to the Office? what are the important steps the firm can take to facilitate the return to the office?
    • Would you be interested in continuing to work from home on specific days of the week for an extended period of time even after the office is open?
    • Having Children at home who need Homeschooling Is a challenge to working parents?
    • Commute issues? especially with dense public transportation inside big metropolitan areas?
    • Any changes for the employee's health insurance? worker's compensation insurance ? or any other benefits being impacted by the new workplace strategy?


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    Tay Othman AIA
    Project Architect
    DES Architects & Engineers
    Concord CA
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  • 2.  RE: Return To the office - Next Steps?

    Posted 05-26-2020 12:21 AM
    Our firm did a survey last month and below are some of the results

    In general, employee's desire to return to the office is divided
    • 28% are on the reluctant side to return to the office
    • 37% do not feel too strongly and would be ok returning to the office
    • 34% are feeling its time to return to the office
    • 58% of employees can return to the office with nothing preventing them
    • Childcare may be an issue for about 19% of the population and may start to get worked out as the SIP lifts and childcare options become more readily available
    • "Other" concerns were mainly workplace safety related at 24%
    • Employees would like to continue working remotely with 75% of employees wanting to work remotely 2 or more days per week
    • A smaller percentage of folks prefer to work onsite daily or remotely one day per week at 25%.

    Other Requested preliminary steps as required by the employees.

    • Provide hand sanitizer stations at the office entrance, meeting rooms, and common areas
    • Retrofit the restrooms to have hands free faucets and soap dispenser
    • Require touchless temperature check (and formal log) at the front desk before allowing employees to go to their desk
    • Provide and require face masks to be worn at all times
    • Adjust furniture such that no one is sitting closer than 6 feet to the nearest person
    • Adjust work hours or workdays to reduce the population of the office
    • Provide tissues at locations where required to touch common items (elevator buttons,restroom door handles, etc.)
    • If a face to face meeting is required, limit meeting size to maintain 6-foot clearances between folks in conference room
    • Full time cleaning service (day porter) to clean conference rooms after every meeting as well as common areas, kitchen, and restrooms
    • Provide single use items instead of bulk (i.e. individual creamer instead of half gallon milk)
    • Provide cleaning supplies for you to clean yourstation before using it each day (in addition to enhanced janitorial cleaning)
    • Require all visitors and guests to observe established office protocol (temp check, mask, distancing, etc.)

    ------------------------------
    Tay Othman AIA
    Project Architect
    DES Architects & Engineers
    Concord CA
    ------------------------------