How Can Smart Transform The Office Experience Post-Covid?

Building systems could reassure occupants by providing real-time information about the environment itself, such as occupancy levels, air quality or how recently spaces have been cleaned. One example is the CleanPulse app, which WSP developed for Canadian transport and tour operator Ontario Northland, so passengers or hotel guests can check the cleaning status of their bus or room. This could be easily rolled out to offices, either linked to the building management system or, more simply, as a cloud-based app.

“People are going to want that sense of safety – they want to feel comfortable that they’re not exposing themselves to risk,” says Randy Howder, Gensler principal and managing director of its San Francisco office. “The only way to really know that is with the kind of data that sensors provide. Before, this was just used to help facilities managers understand whether they needed more conference rooms or to turn the lights off when nobody was there, but now it’s going to be much more important to show data on spaces being maintained or cleaned.”

As well as facilitating touch-free entry, apps could also help to resolve common gripes about contemporary offices, such as a lack of dedicated space. “Your phone acts as your access card to move around the building,” says Jaco Cronje, an Internet-of-Things solution architect with WSP in Houston. “You could use the app on your phone to call the elevator, and it could send you a note to let you know where there’s a free seat so you know which way to turn when you reach your floor.” Connecting access control to the presence sensor network and room booking system could facilitate genuine activity based-working, by enabling people to view occupancy levels in different areas and reserve spaces. If the room booking system is integrated with individuals’ schedules, they could be automatically allotted appropriate spaces for each part of the day. Then if you want to speak to a colleague, the app could show their location so that you don’t have to wander fruitlessly.

Building amenities could also be accessed through the app, enabling people to place orders for food or book fitness sessions, and check on queues for the lunchroom. Queueing is set to become an all-too-familiar experience in the post-Covid world, and this will drive an expectation for virtual solutions, believes Fran Heller, CEO of Californian start-up Good2Go. Its restroom app was commercially  launched in 2019 in response to the lack of public restrooms, and offers keyless, touchless access and virtual queueing to a network of facilities. Post-Covid, touchless restrooms will be even more valued, but it’s the virtual queuing component of the app that is suddenly fulfilling a critical need. “No one likes to stand in a queue, so having your position held virtually – so your phone stands in line for you – is a highly desirable feature,” she says. “If you could get into the queue for the restroom while you’re sitting at your desk, that is way more efficient. But it doesn’t matter what’s on the other side of the door, it’s applicable to any resource.” Heller is now talking to office owners about using the app to manage elevator capacity.

Occupants could not only understand but control their environment via their own device too. “We can create integration that allows people to walk into a meeting room and scan a code to enable room control on their own phone while they’re there,” says Colin O’Gallagher, senior associate and smart building consultant with WSP in New York. “Then they don’t have to touch a communal control pad, but there’s a wow factor in it too. I think landlords are going to want to invest in strategies that are highly visible and really have an impact on the occupant experience by giving a technology-rich feel to their spaces.”

Going a step further, the building could connect with wearables or smartphone health apps to support health and wellbeing or fitness goals. “Maybe the more data you are willing to share, the more the smart building management system takes care of you,” suggests Oliver Larsson, telecoms director at WSP in Sweden. “In the app, you could say ‘this week, I want to be a bit more healthy’, so it might tell you not to take the elevator or book the conference room that’s furthest away from your office space so you have to walk more.” This could be coupled with “nudges” to help people adopt healthier behaviours, he adds – he gives the example of a Swedish developer that deliberately makes the elevators slower to encourage people to take the stairs. To address concerns about privacy, this could be opt-in only: “It’s like a cookie on the web – if you want to have a new layer of information, you can accept it. If you don’t want to have that opportunity, you don’t have to.”

All of this is likely to span both landlord and occupant systems, so there needs to be some integration between them. The developer or facility manager could provide the core application and then issue modules to individual tenants, which can be reskinned for a different look and feel. Or if a tenant already has their own application and portal, they can use APIs to exchange information with the building systems. “We can build a robust network infrastructure in such a way that building owners can easily add apps to the set of services they offer their tenants,” says Lucy Casacia, vice president, smart solutions at WSP in Canada. “That enables the space to be adaptable and to evolve to meet needs in real time as they arise. We know we’re going to need a greater awareness of where people are, but we also need to inject some kind of interactivity so that people can be in a space and feel the excitement. It would be terrific if we could make our workplace feel like we’re at a sports or entertainment event, and get that sense of camaraderie. You just can’t recreate that vibe through platforms such as Zoom or Teams.”