Escaping Covid 19 Public Building Dynamic

Escaping Covid 19 Public Building Dynamic 

The Health Service

The amazing speed that exhibition buildings transformed into hospitals points the way to fast expansion of the national health hospitals and other facilities.

Every city now has empty warehouses. Some of them are very big.

These are big empty buildings with key services already up and running. Electricity, gas, wifi, heating water and sewage are all ready to go. Now these premises need to be converted into hospitals. Or specialist health service facilities. 

The bureaucratic hoops will have to be resolved. For example, Planning Authorities will need to be much more flexible.

We know that it takes no more than a few weeks to convert such a building with the experience of developing Nightingale hospitals.

There may be a requirement for added facilities but parallel development can reduce the time taken.

A dynamic drive to add facilities using existing buildings would save costs and deliver these much needed added facilities at speed.

Keeping social distances in Courts

As with hospitals, there are already existing buildings that can be repurposed and equipped as law courts.

The need for new designs is obvious. For the Judiciary, Clerks, Defendants, Prosecuting and Defending Council, as well as witnesses, will have to be considered. 

Some of this will be offered in the physical layout of the buildings but the use of more advanced communication will also be important. Witnesses can use virtual conferencing (and there is absolutely no need for some special alternative to existing services).  Application of Augmented Reality to display locations and other evidence will be helpful inexpensive, timesaving and cost reducing. Of course, one would expect verbatim speech to text to record proceedings. This may need legislation to achieve but is a good outcome we have developed during the Covid19 experience. 

 

Ancient planning restrictions will, of course, have to be revised. But why do we need warehouses separate from shops?

The cost of expert witnesses and other participants can be reduced by using virtual communication and costs to reflect the reduction in time, travel and on-costs.

A high powered and empowered design and development team will be needed to propose a path forward. A parallel development is quite possible to introduce these developments in weeks and moths and not years.

 Public Offices

Public offices, like other public sector buildings and schools, will need to be re-configured. 

Homeworking and split-shift working are much more common and the needs of people working from home requires work. Things like wifi and cellular data (wifi is just not up to the job yet - Covid19 connectivity demonstrated how dismal some connections are. 

For public service workers, there is a need for re-configured office layout and facilities for people working full time and part-time from home. Computers, ergonomic desks and chairs, cameras, microphones and headsets need to be to at a minimum home standard. Screens need to be able to perform the tasks required of them (plus virtual and augmented reality capabilities). 

Local and national sourcing will need to be the prefered resource to put associated costs like these back into the economy.  

The British furniture design and production sectors are more than capable to provide the world-leading expertise and capacity to execute this change and spread design expertise and production costs over a large number of public buildings.

Schools and further education

The social and economic cost of schooling is very high. In addition to teaching and social integration, there is a domestic cost. School hours are as inconvenient as it is possible to get. The pencil and paper nature of homework is also very old fashioned.

The Covid19 experience of home education has given a number of clues as to what can be achieved and its failings. 

Providing home and community space for homework with online assistance using digital conferencing, social media, AR, VR and other technologies is a challenge. 

The cost of the change is going to be high but there is a way of mitigating costs.

There is a fixation of public facilities being for the public sector. Offering advanced facilities to both the voluntary and commercial sectors will have a number of benefits. The cost can be shared but much more important, the public sector can be an exemplar and show voluntary and business parts of the economy the advantages of using their advanced facilities. Excellence in the public sector matched by excellence in the voluntary and business sector will be a major economic driver.

Perhaps it seems hard to re-imagine a school with small business offices and workshops as part of the infrastructure.

Future schools will also need to have social distancing as well as different out-doors and social interaction spaces.

Classes able to be delivered electronically and in social separating, classrooms need to be thought through with the government using the professions to provide advice and legal frameworks.  

The cost can be shared but much more important the public sector can show voluntary and business parts of the economy the advantages of using their advanced facilities. 

Excellence in the public sector matched by excellence in the voluntary and business sector will be a major economic driver.

We need more ideas.