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A breath of fresh air for city's office workers

One way to improve employees' job performance is not only overlooked, it's invisible

Written by - Scott Frank

Hundreds of books have been written about how to make employees more productive. Business schools offer courses on it. But an often-missed element in boosting workers’ performance is right under our noses—literally.
It’s air.
With Manhattan projected to need up to 92 million square feet of new office space over the next 25 years, building owners and developers should heed a Harvard-led study that indicates better indoor air quality lifts employee performance. The study reports that an office worker’s cognitive functions improve significantly when ventilation rates increase and levels of volatile organic compounds and carbon dioxide decrease.
The impact of the study, published in October 2015, isn’t limited to new buildings. HVAC system upgrades, building renovations and interior redesigns can accomplish similar air-quality improvements in existing office buildings.
In recent years, many New York City building owners, developers and designers have proactively improved office building air quality based on anecdotal evidence and perhaps a little intuition. The Harvard research data should inspire many more to do so.
Citing extensive supporting research, the study authors concluded that higher cognitive scores in nine criteria tested would translate into improved productivity and increased worker health and satisfaction. This includes a decrease in absenteeism caused by illness.
“The largest effects were seen for crisis response, information usage and strategy, all of which are indicators of higher-level cognitive function and decision-making,” researchers reported.
Clearly, the message is that better indoor air quality is likely to yield better staff and firm performance, along with happier employees who are less likely to leave.
Achieving these improvements economically, however, can be challenging. To bring fresh, outdoor air into a building consumes space, raises capital costs and requires energy to heat and cool this air. But it can be done in a feasible way. Here are a few steps that owners and managers can take to create better indoor air quality in New York City office buildings:
• Increase design ventilation rates to 40 cubic feet per/person (approximately two to three times standard code-mandated amounts), but include heat recovery from general exhaust systems to recapture some of the energy use.
• Use demand-control ventilation strategies that adjust the amount of ventilation air delivered to a space based on the number of people present at that time, as well as by the levels of indoor pollutants detected by sensing devices.
• Strengthen tenant building standards to require low-emitting furnishings and finishes to reduce levels of volatile organic compounds (VOCs).
• Include bipolar ionization technology in air handlers to break down VOCs.
• For existing buildings, consider converting to dedicated outside-air systems, which use smaller overhead duct distribution to deliver 100% outside air to fan-powered terminal units above the hung ceiling. The units then distribute the prescribed ventilation air quantity on a space-by-space basis. These systems also use chilled water to regulate space temperature.
Every office building is different, and some do not lend themselves to extensive reconfiguration for air-quality improvement. But considering the results presented in the Harvard study, it seems prudent for New York City office building owners and managers to look for ways to reap the benefits of improved indoor air quality for employee performance and satisfaction.
Scott Frank is a partner with Jaros, Baum & Bolles, a consulting engineering firm based in Manhattan.

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