Many businesses within our CBDs may need to rethink how they are able to accommodate excessive amounts of visitors with social distancing rules and health building regulations that are a part of our lives.
That’s the view of Boon Edam Australia Managing Director Michael Fisher, who believes the built environment faces paying excessive costs to cater for extra visitors under post-pandemic restrictions.
Fisher says businesses such as hotels, hospitality, shopping and tourist venues could be those forced to make alterations.
“Businesses are having to review their commercial and public floorspace uses. Increasingly, as growth resumes, they need to ensure they are making best use of this expensive asset while observing an expanded duty of care post-Covid to protect occupants. It is an all-encompassing emphasis and opportunity for industry leaders such as building designers, developers, constructors, owners and operators,” he says.
“All types of business may face pressure on space as CBDs rebound, because all types of business will have a duty of care to provide a healthy environment protected from viral and ambient health hazards presented by crowds and uncontrolled access to facilities."
"This challenge to architects, designers and building owners and managers will only increase over the years ahead, as protecting health while making best use of space rises up the agenda for architectural, construction, building management and social infrastructure, including schools and hospitals.”
“We don’t suggest for a moment that one solution can be a silver bullet for interior sustainability issues – this is a multi-tiered issue – but we do say that revolving doors and integrated security entrances have inherent advantages that increasingly suit our built environments post-pandemic.”
Revolving doors could be designed to help with a smooth pedestrian flow and to regulate the flow of people authorised to enter particular areas and to control numbers without employing excessive numbers of expensive manned security points and lightening the load on COVID Marshals.
Fisher says theses types of doors are also able to free up for profitable use floorspace that was previously unusable because it was too close to an entrance that let in weather, noise and pollution.
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