The country is reopening – are our buildings ready?

Kindergartens and schools are beginning to reopen carefully after COVID-19, in line with guidance from the authorities. Traffic is returning and offices are starting to fill up again. In connection with this, the Labour Inspection Authority has issued updated guidance for offices that are reopening. Our buildings are not set up for the new requirements, and the consequences could be very costly for both companies that own commercial buildings and companies that occupy office space, in the form of investment costs and increased operating expenses.

The Labour Inspection Authority's guidance 444 is something most people in the commercial building sector are familiar with. It describes, among other things, what the indoor climate should be like in an office building, but it is quite general. For example, it requires office temperatures between 19 and 26 degrees, but we know that demanding tenants would never accept this. It also mentions air velocity (draught), air exchange rate (l/s) and air quality with CO2 limits of 1,000 ppm. Radon is referred to in the Technical Building Regulations (TEK) with its requirements, but humidity is only mentioned in passing in connection with moisture damage or ventilation of building materials. It also states that no requirements are set for humidity:

"Even though humidity may have some significance for binding dust and reducing static build-up, no requirements are set for humidity."

There is more focus on saying that if there are local humidifiers, these must not exceed the threshold of 35–40% in winter due to condensation risk and moisture damage.

To me this suggests that Labour Inspection Authority guidance 444 is ready for revision. Today we have a great deal of good research on temperature, relative humidity and CO2 affecting productivity, illness and cognitive learning.

New guidance on returning to work for office workplaces

This advises that relative humidity should be above 30 percent – including in winter – while also recommending consideration be given to changing the ventilation rate to maintain humidity.

Almost two months ago when COVID-19 arrived I began diving deep into the subject of relative humidity and asked the question of whether it was the building, the furnishings or the people that were most important in a building. I referenced Proptech Bergen, which at the time had relative humidity of 16–17%, which is quite normal in Norwegian buildings in winter. We took measures in one office with a local humidifier that brought it up to 40%, but this was only for individual offices, not the whole building. So how should we act on the Labour Inspection Authority's guidance now?

The positive aspect is that we now have focus on indoor climate and how it affects people, not just the building. This will probably mean that future buildings will adapt to new requirements, but the negative is that 80% of all buildings in 2050 are already built, so the challenge lies with all the offices we have today.

Giving guidance to have higher relative humidity is easy. Measuring this in 2020 with all the available sensors is also easy – but solving the problem is difficult.

The reason we have low relative humidity in our commercial buildings in winter is that we have cold and dry outdoor air that we heat and bring into our buildings. With high air exchange rates, we cannot significantly increase humidity through the influence of people or plants. This means our new buildings can have as low as 10–13% relative humidity on the worst days, and throughout winter it is rarely above 30%. It is clear that the topic of humidity is hotly debated these days and a lot of interesting research is emerging. There is for example a project called "40to60RH.com" that argues that if we increase relative humidity to 40–60% it will save lives and urges the WHO to act.

To be able to control what humidity we have in buildings, a humidification system must be installed. But the truth is that very few buildings have humidification systems today. It is essentially only hospitals due to infection risk, or museums where art can be damaged by low humidity. Office buildings do not normally have humidification systems, and the sad truth is that we have traditionally thought more about the building than about the people in it when it comes to humidity.

What can we actually do?

So how should we proceed? Must landlords make costly renovations of technical systems after having had reduced rental income and possibly even some tenants who will not return due to bankruptcy? Will they then have the means to make this happen? Or will it end up a bit like radon – where we know it is a problem but choose not to measure it? But will people get away with ignoring this with so much talk about infection risk?

When we look at new building standards such as WELL, which is a standard that focuses more on health and well-being than the building envelope (like BREEAM), indoor climate data should be transparent and visible, preferably on information screens. This is a trend we are seeing – we are much more transparent today. Given that a sensor costs only a few hundred kroner and professional solutions can be set up in a few minutes, I am fairly confident that most tenants will view indoor climate as an important part of office infrastructure. In the same way that after being "hacked" on servers, better security systems are installed – now that our immune systems have been through the biggest "hack" most of us have experienced, this will clearly be a focus for all serious companies that take their employees seriously. So I think it will be difficult to ignore the guidance coming now.

Those with children in kindergarten have experienced how drop-off, opening hours and pick-up have changed. Office life probably won't return to normal any time soon.

So what should we actually do? With a high probability, a technical solution for the whole building will not be in place right now. And I am doubtful that most building owners have the finances or the ability to make such an investment now. Will autumn then see us hoarding humidifiers in the same way we hoarded toilet paper in March? In testing at Proptech Bergen this solved the problem in the short term, but you then have to refill the water tank daily. In addition, you can easily lose control if you don't have an overarching system that views humidity as a whole for the building. As mentioned, there is much focus on Labour Inspection Authority guidance 444 about keeping relative humidity below 35–40%, which also becomes a very fine balancing act, and I personally do not think this is the solution. I am also doubtful that a building owner would accept tenants being able to "risk" damage to the building in the form of moisture and rot damage.

AN ALTERNATIVE OFFICE LIFE?

We have experienced how working from home has worked for many people during COVID-19. And the biggest challenge many faced was juggling work and being a home teacher. If schools and kindergartens are open, I think many would agree that one can do a good job from home instead of the office, as long as one is not physically dependent on, for example, a warehouse and logistics. We have been through a digital journey where we have taken a "10-year leap" in a few weeks, and most have seen the possibilities of being productive from home. Perhaps this is something we take with us – a few days a week, or travelling to the nearest building instead of across town. Should buildings then perhaps facilitate shorter days, home working, or adapted offices on the days when the risk of infection is greatest? Several companies are starting with infection-free offices where indoor climate is an important factor. Examples of companies growing now with this focus include Orbit Technology.

Besides the focus on humidity, the recommendation is that the ventilation system should run for all or most of the day. This means in practice that if you don't have advanced people-counting controls, you could easily double the costs for energy, maintenance and wear on the ventilation system, while also using much more energy on heating since the air is usually delivered under-heated. Today a building is typically set to run from 06:00 to 18:00, i.e. 12 hours per day. The authorities want to extend core hours, while the ventilation system should run when people are present. If you don't have insight into this and have to make a risk assessment, you quickly end up running it 24 hours a day – which the tenant ends up paying for.

This will then create an even greater difference between "dumb" and "smart" buildings, where you could see service charges that are double in "dumb" buildings.

Should the Labour Inspection Authority issue guidance that demands so much from landlords? Who will pay for the doubled energy costs, and do we have the infrastructure to handle the load this will place on our cities? Is this now when the "new offices" offering short-term leases, multiple locations and adapted environments will have their "boom"?

One thing is certain: the start we saw around property technology (proptech) in 2019 was only the tip of the iceberg, and the "digitalisation leap" we humans have taken – our buildings must now take it too!

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