Digital Design Series 09.23.20 - Re-Occupy with Confidence

Re-Occupy with Confidence: Practical Approaches to Reduce Risks and Create Healthier Indoor Environments

As building owners and managers plan to reoccupy the facilities in their charge, they want to know that they have appropriately implemented the best practices to promote occupant health and reduce risks of pathogen transmission amongst occupants. Most importantly, they want to assure employees and visitors that their facility is as safe as possible.

Alan will touch on the consideration of how the pandemic will influence design, and the technical response to risk reduction in existing buildings. This presentation will first review what science tells us about how pathogens (including SARS-CoV2) are spread inside buildings, and then outline a strategic path to reduce transmission risks through comprehensive administrative and engineering controls, including planning, training, physical distancing, indoor air quality, disinfection, and ongoing wellness management.

The program will also discuss re-occupancy protocols to ensure healthy indoor environments in buildings that have been dormant for an extended period due to stay-at-home orders. We will review the roles of facility managers, architects, engineers, and industrial hygienists in support of safer facilities, and the tools, analysis and testing they may deploy to inform and validate solutions. The presentation will focus on reducing specific COVID-19 risks today, as well as maintaining general health and wellness into the future, giving people confidence that their work environment will be suitable for re-entry and on-going occupancy.

Presented by Alan Scott, FAIA, LEED Fellow, LEED AP BD+C, O+M, CEM, WELL AP

Senior Consultant, Intertek

Alan is a registered architect and sustainability expert with over 30 years of experience and a lifelong commitment to the environment. In his early career as a practicing architect, he helped launch sustainable design practices at several major firms. Since 2000—as the 13th LEED AP—Alan has creatively applied his skills as a facilitator, consultant, project director, and teacher in support of high-performance, sustainable built environment projects in North and South America. His project work focuses on boosting new and existing building performance, decarbonization, occupant wellness and resilience.