Buildings Management Strategies Ensure Healthy Workplaces

Ashish Modi, Vice President and General Manager, Honeywell Building Technologies - India, ASEAN, Korea explains how buildings can play a critical role in helping to curb the spread of viruses   Even before COVID-19, most people spent majority of their time indoors, but now it’s even more due to lockdown. COVID-19 is also creating new norms which raises the question – are our buildings in good health? For years, buildings have largely been made to be energy efficient. A healthy building goes beyond energy efficiency to ensure the health, confidence and productivity of the people who use it. Efficient and well-designed HVAC strategies can promote health and wellbeing within an existing space – whether a healthcare facility or a building being used as a temporary support facility, airflow is critical. Our wireless technology solutions like the Lighting Management Systems is designed to help our customers improve their energy consumption. Honeywell recently launched the Honeywell Forge Energy Optimization, its cloud-based, closed-loop, machine learning solution that continuously studies a building’s energy consumption patterns and automatically adjusts to optimal energy saving settings. Honeywell Forge Energy Optimization is commercially available in India and we have several customer pilots running in India. Using a building management system and specialized air handling & filters, buildings can ensure the circulation of fresh air occurs multiple times a day to help remove undesirable compounds for a building, and when appropriate, use negative pressure to create isolation rooms. In addition to fresh air and ventilation, air filtration and purification as well as temperature and humidity are critical to improving air quality and even helping reduce the transmission of many viruses. Security is also an important factor – using access control and video analytics, companies can ensure the right people are in the right part of a building as well as to understand a person’s access history to understand where a person has traveled throughout a building campus. These foot traffic patterns can inform settings for a variety of devices – like ventilation and temperature controls – to address both health needs and energy use. In addition, video analytics can identify where in a building an infected occupant spent time for contact tracing efforts. And all of this can be done with limited human labor, granting staff time to focus on other critical tasks. Building operators must act quickly to help protect occupants from exposure to viruses, while also managing factors that impact more general and holistic wellbeing. We are also seeing an increased incidence of H1N1, SARS, COVID19; and our solutions like Electronic Air Cleaning and Ultra Violet sanitization for HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning), are helping our customers reduce the risk of spreading the infection through the HVAC systems.