So far, the world has been following harsh but simple guidelines from their state and local authorities, which came down to sheltering at home, minimizing contact and handwashing.

All existing frameworks around space safety will have to be redefined in the near future.

The easing of restrictions and the return to work, however, are about to put all of us into a mounting complexity of safety regulations, and facility management companies will have to come to the forefront.

There are a few aspects to keep in mind when starting to think about how to tackle workplace safety issues:

• Contagion will continue for months and years ahead;
• We operate in a “we don’t know what we don’t know” environment;
• Existing frameworks of accountability are no longer applicable;
• Workplace safety stretches far beyond office walls.

Redefining Responsibility

Numerous parties are involved in a commercial building’s life cycle:

• Landlords of all kinds (individuals, general and limited partners, shareholders, etc.);
• Tenants and subtenants;
• Property management companies / facility operators;
• Third parties performing outsourced functions (cleaning, maintenance, security, etc.);
• Equipment suppliers running post-installment services (HVAC, CCTV, etc.);
• Visitors of all kinds;
• Third-party event managers and their sub-contractors;
• Delivery persons;
• And the list could continue …

Up until now, all of them had their roles and areas of responsibilities related to facility usage more or less well defined. If an incident happened, investigation procedures were outlined, and mitigation measures were clear. In cases of dispute, lawyers had their legal guidelines and history of precedents.

Looking for clues of how to safely operate a commercial building, it might be a good idea to look for advice from healthcare real estate operators.

All existing frameworks around space safety will have to be redefined in the near future. Should we try to envision the new setup, it makes more sense to look at parties’ financial viability rather than at existing norms. For example, if a management company were struggling to keep office-building occupancy at a high level, it would make sense for them to deliver an enhanced safety promise to their tenants in order to retain them.

The nature of business is another factor to keep in mind. For example, a tenant whose business is in the wellness industry would prefer to retain control and responsibility over the safety of their space, even given an opportunity to shift part of it on landlords’ shoulders, because a single health-related incident at one location within a chain could be detrimental for the whole business.

Sources of Information for Creating New Guidelines

Looking for clues of how to safely operate a commercial building, it might be a good idea to look for advice from healthcare real estate operators. Medical facilities are the most demanding about hygiene and safety, and property managers should refer to their playbooks. But this is only a tiny fragment to keep in mind while trying to draw the recovery roadmap.

…actual efficacies of measures and the ways in which management companies are communicating them are two different things.

Facility operators are receiving numerous daily – if not, hourly – updates on the market situation, scientific discoveries, authorities’ announcements and so on. In this fluid environment they somehow have to deliver an adequate level of workplace safety for their tenants to start coming back.

Attempts to eliminate informational noise do not help. Even scientific evidence coming from the most reputable resources leaves us puzzled. Consider these two examples:

#1. A joint research team has recently published their findings in New England Journal of Medicine, concluding that the virus can live for up to 72 hours on plastic surfaces, 48 hours on stainless steel, 24 hours on cardboard and 4 hours on copper. Even though the amount of surviving particles is very low, the WHO takes these discoveries as a baseline and advises to regularly sanitize surfaces and objects in its guide on workplace administration.

#2. At the same time, Hendrik Streeck, German epidemiologist and Director of the Institute of Virology, has come up with a number of shocking statements, among which are that infection rates are 10 times higher than currently thought and that expectations about a vaccine being ever developed are naive. Pre-published, interim results of his team’s study also show that the risk of contracting from surfaces is virtually zero, as the virus can survive on them for only a few minutes.

Which of the two scientific opinions should property managers take as a ground when putting together their cleaning guideline and deciding how to allocate limited resources?

…facility managers are about to become as important for people’s well-being as their physicians and therapists

Another aspect to keep in mind is that the actual efficacies of measures and the ways in which management companies are communicating them are two different things. An army of cleaners running around and wiping all surfaces within their reach might create a strong impression that property managers are taking things seriously and know what they are doing, yet these efforts might end up being ineffectual, at best. At worst, a false sense of safety could lead to more relaxed attitudes among employees and spikes in transmission and contagion.

It is too early to draw any conclusion about what a definition of a safe workplace is nowadays. One new trend is a fact, however: facility managers are about to become as important for people’s well-being as their physicians and therapists. Those who go today’s challenge and figure out how to do things in a new way are about to get a strong competitive edge for a long time ahead.