ATS Integrated Solutions

BUILDING SOLUTIONS

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facility planning

Changes in space, here on earth.

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Words/phrases we were hoping not to deal with in 2021:

“Unprecedented”

“New normal”

“Lockdown”

“Social distancing”

And yet.. here we are. 2020 brought us the pandemic and these terms. 2021 will bring the aftermath and what it means for business, commercial real estate and facilities management. While you might assume that companies have decided as a whole that they are doing fine with virtual employees and can let go of some of their unused space, this isn’t the case across the board.

In come instances, yes, we are working with customers who are realizing that their space is now more than what is needed. They’ve learned to pivot and adapt to a virtual workforce, and the effect of this is needing less office space, fewer cubicles and a downsizing of telecom equipment, furniture and conference rooms.

At the beginning of 2020 we were in the process of working with a customer to determine if their space design actually met their needs. Our proprietary system, Space Vi , does just this and now we’ve used this technology to help companies figure out what they need and what they don’t. In the case of one customer, they learned (even before sending employees home to work) that they were occupying space on their lease on two floors of a building and were never utilizing it. Now that many of their employees will continue to work from home, they can clearly see that those two floors are not needed, even as they redistribute workspace.

But, for other companies, re-allocating space and re-working it could mean a business needs MORE space. One of our customers, a call-center, needs to have employees on-site. Supervisors need to be able to walk by and listen in for evaluation purposes, for instance. Prior to the pandemic, these call-center cubicles were crammed in, allowing a company to maximize their space with the number of call-center representatives they needed. Now, in order to have that same number of people working, they need more space for social-distancing purposes. They need room for plexiglass dividers. In some cases, this could double the square footage a company requires.

As our customers move forward and bring their teams back onsite, we will continue to work with them on the design of their space. Our customers know that with our help they can be sure they are utilizing only the space they need, and that their employees will be safe.

If you’re looking for help on reassigning space assets for your business, we’re just a phone call away. You can reach us at (800) 567-1180 .

Bringing together intelligent data to answer critical questions about facilities

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Lately, while companies are opening and preparing to reopen, we’ve offered solutions and advice for how to safely do so. As we continue to hear from customers about their needs, we continue to fine-tune our suggestions and solutions packages.

We’ve shared thoughts about temperature scanners but once an employee is inside, either on the manufacturing floor or in a corner office, do your systems allow you to know if they have traveled lately and are putting others at risk? Do they insure that employees are following proper social-distancing guidelines? This brought us to another set of questions regarding building space, in general.

Long exposure image of a subway train going past a building

How do you know not only if your spaces are safe, but if they are being used efficiently? Are there areas in your building which lend themselves to higher productivity levels? Do you know why?

ECT Services has developed the space Vi Facility Visualization Application to accomplish all of this. Recently, a customer discovered an entire FLOOR of their office was not being used. By taking a deeper look at the space, they are now able to spread teammates out, making it safer for them to return to their workspaces.

The spaceVi® Facility Visualization Software is a set of software services, apps, and connectors that work together to turn your unrelated sources of data into coherent, visually immersive, and interactive insights. Your data may be Excel® spreadsheets, human resource databases, accounting databases, access control systems, video surveillance databases, building automation systems, or a collection of cloud-based and on-premises data warehouse repositories.  spaceVi® will enable you to connect to your data sources, visualize, analyze, and discover what is essential, and share the results with anyone or everyone you want.

The software platform allows you to graphically visualize space efficiency, resource allocation, people traffic flow analysis, and event tracking and response. spaceVi® utilizes the latest in graphic technology to immerse you into the activity of your building’s space providing you with key data to make critical business decisions quickly.

We see this software as a highly useful tool in the immediate future as we all work to get back to work, keeping our team healthy while doing so. We also see this has a tool going forward to plan, design and adjust space usage within companies to be sure the space is optimized for each job.

If your company is preparing to return to work and you are looking for solutions, please contact ECT Services at 800-567-8810 or visit our website to contact us by email.