By Larry Mayotte, Operations Manager, Service

Building owners and facility managers are diligently preparing their plans to reoccupy buildings that have been under-utilized or sat empty for weeks or months. In their efforts to ensure occupants can safely return to the workplace, they are tuning up their heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems and implementing physical distancing and other protocol to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.

One area that is often overlooked but is just as critical to safely reopening a building, is a building’s water system (potable, non-potable, cooling towers, evaporative HVAC equipment). Most building owners and operators don’t typically have to deal with health risks from these systems. But, in buildings that have low or no use for extended periods of time, there is significant risk of bacteria such as legionella building up. This build-up puts occupants at risk of exposure to Pontiac Fever, an acute nonfatal respiratory disease, or Legionnaires Disease, a type of pneumonia caused by inhaling bacteria from water and the deadliest waterborne disease in the United States.

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By Michael Frank, Vice President, Engineering and Design

Many people are wondering what it will look like when we all return to work in buildings that have been mostly vacant for weeks, and in some cases months. There are a lot of conversations happening and articles being written about occupant density, and I imagine seating layouts will never look quite the same.

How about the HVAC and plumbing systems that have been put into a holiday schedule or turned off for this same time period? How do we get them ready so our employees can return with confidence? Once they are ready, and employees start returning in a staged occupancy, how should we operate them and what should we be thinking about? There is a lot of research and reporting being done on the role of an HVAC system in keeping us safe, or potentially spreading the novel coronavirus.

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