Office elevators present ultimate distancing hurdle
TORONTO — As tens of thousands of Canadian workers start preparing for a post-lockdown return to their offices, elevators have become a hot-button issue amid concerns about the potential for long lineups and frustrating waits to get up or down.
Highrise building operators in particular are trying to figure out how to ensure people can get to their office floors while maintaining adequate physical-distancing recommended by health authorities to curb the spread of COVID19. While offices can be modified to ensure people keep sufficiently apart, getting them safely inside once they start coming back presents its own unique challenges.
“You never think of elevators as the pinch point of a building, but now, because of what we’re trying to do, it really becomes apparent that it is,” said Ron Isabelle, an engineer and longtime elevator consultant.
“Elevators are becoming the bottle neck in the building.”
With many office buildings now all but empty, elevator-cramming has not been a problem. However, as more people begin exchanging their improvised home offices for the real thing, the issue has taken on a new life, especially if there’s a return to near normal occupancy.
Most commercial elevators can carry about 10 to 12 people at a time, but public-health advice to stay at least two metres apart makes that kind of capacity unthinkable. Anxious landlords are pondering how to flatten their own rush-hour curves as they model scenarios in which either two, three or four people would be allowed in a cab at any one time.
“Elevators are not designed for social-distancing,” Isabelle said. “If a landlord says: ‘I have to get up to 95 per cent,’ it’s not going to happen. It’s physically impossible unless you have people who start lining up at the building at five in the morning and exit the building at 10 o’clock at night.”
EY Canada, whose downtown Toronto office tower is 42 storeys, said physical-distancing requirements would likely reduce the amount of available office space by half. As a result, the company, which would normally have about 1,900 employees in the office, was looking ahead to eventually having only around 800 or 900, with the rest working remotely, said Darryl Wright, an associate partner. Numbers of people in communal spaces would be restricted.
Initially, Wright said, only about 85 staff would be brought in, obviating the need for staggered staff times to avoid pinch points, although employees will likely adjust their work schedules if needed. The bottom line is that employees feel safe and public health rules can be followed, he said. “We’ll learn as we go,” Wright said. “We’re just going to phase it in. There’s no rushing.”
If office staff do return in large numbers, limiting elevator passenger loads could require security staff and measures to ensure no crowding in lobbies, passageways or elevators.
Another measure that could be used to enforce distancing is to use a load-weighing device, which tells an elevator to ignore calls for a car when it reaches a set maximum occupancy of say two people. That means, for example, those on intermediate floors waiting to go up or down might hear devices with just a few people whirr past them without stopping.
Normally, the standard wait for an office elevator is about 35 seconds. Curtailing occupancy, especially for buildings that run 50 or more storeys, means wait times will soar. “Definitely, people will have to wait longer for an elevator,” Isabelle said.