Day: April 14, 2020

Today on the Daily Grind, Rob Almond, CEO, NEST, discussed disaster planning and crisis management, and provided key takeaways as multi-site facilities businesses continue to battle the COVID-19 pandemic. NEST is a national multi-site facility services and management company that helps build, manage and track construction and facilities maintenance management projects.  

Almond discussed how NEST has been working with St. Joseph’s University. “During the last few years, and more importantly, the last few weeks we have been meeting with graduating seniors to discuss crisis management planning, awareness and preparedness,” Almond explained.

 “Our relationship with St. Joseph’s goes back roughly ten years now, as a sponsor of their business policy competition. Each graduating class has a cap stone class project during which they select a publicly owned company – they identify challenges the company is facing and develop a business plan to guide the company through those issues. For six years, two semesters per year, I served as a judge when the final six projects were presented.

What we discovered was interesting. Almost every semester one group had presented a case study about a NEST customer. We have always found it fun to and beneficial to share the information from the graduating class with our client. One time the seniors had the opportunity to present their findings to the client. We also allowed the students to sit in on our business review with the client. That was always our intent – to bring them into a real world setting and provide them that experience.

Five years ago, we pivoted and went to their financial planning and business intelligence department and created a co-op program. They presented some of the analytics and reporting we had developed earlier as it now relates to the current Covid-19 crisis. So again, we’re really all about providing students the opportunity to interact with real organizations.

As we look forward to getting back to normal, everyone has choices. You could wait to see how things will go. However, we all agree that’s not going to be the case. Everything’s going to be different going forward, from this type of virtual conferencing, to the way we conduct business.

Obviously, we know brick & mortar is not going away, but things are going to be different. Maybe that includes less of a store presence and more of a curb-side delivery presence.  Therefore, you’ve got to think differently.  One student asked me for advice, and I suggested two things:

1.     Give back. No matter how small the gesture is. Right now, that’s so important. Even if it’s just putting on some gloves and helping am elderly neighbor with their trash. People are going to ask what you did during the crisis. Have a positive answer.

2.     Realize opportunities are going to change Job offers from a month ago may be gone. Don’t let that discourage you. Take advantage of what is there. Take it as a challenge and adapt to the challenges and opportunities this crisis has presented.

Today on the Daily Grind, Stephanie H. Taylor, M.D., M. Arch, RSPH(UK), MCABE discussed the importance of air quality and HVAC in facilities during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. As a pediatric oncologist and a graduate of Harvard Medical, Taylor became concerned with the amount of infections that were happening in hospitals and buildings and began to think the HVAC system played a role in the spread of infection.

As a doctor she wasn’t successful communicating with facility managers. Therefore, she acquired her master’s degree in architecture and engineering so she could better understand building architecture and better communicate her concerns.

She then began to study patient outcomes in conjunction with the buildings and hospitals. To her surprise they began to accumulate data that demonstrated a decrease in infection rates in buildings with higher relative humidity.  Stephanie then became associated with ASHRAE and continues to be impressed with their breadth of knowledge on the guidelines they issue.

“Ironically this pandemic is a very frightening thing. But its also an opportunity for us to really understand how important the indoor air environment is in protecting our health,” explained Taylor.

“What we’ve discovered is that’s it’s very important to humidify the indoor environment. We should all be running humidification systems whether it’s a humidifier you buy at your local pharmacy or a full building installation. We should be managing our indoor environments to maintain the relative humidity between 40 and 60%.” Three reasons why increased relative humidity is beneficial:

1.       If someone who has COVID-19 enters your home or office and coughs, sneezes or even breaths, they release small aerosols into the air that are highly infectious. These tiny aerosols quickly shrink. The drier the air is in your building, the quicker and smaller they shrink. Once they become smaller, they can easily pass through the airspace, into different rooms, at a much quicker, efficient rate. Then when they enter another human, they become re-hydrated and are just as infectious. Keeping the humidity between 40%-60% decreases the ability of airborne infectious aerosols to travel.

2.       In the case of this virus, for reasons we don’t quite understand yet, it (COVID-19) is less infectious in a mid-range humidity zone of 40%-60%

3.       We now also know that 40%-60% relative humidity optimizes our respiratory immune system and provides some protection against the virus.  

“We can all take these steps now to ensure we’re putting our best foot forward as we fight this pandemic. As counter-intuitive as it sounds, dry air is actually worse. As human beings we live with a wide range of bacteria and viruses that are beneficial to our health. So, when we dry out the air not only are we not cleaning it, we’re opening the gates for more destructive pathogens,” Taylor concluded.

For more information on the Coronavirus and the latest updates visit the Pandemic Resource Center at www.connexfm.com