Managing indoor air quality ‘the most powerful medicine'

Steve Tomkins, head of Business Development at the Building Engineering Services Association (BESA), explains how the healthcare sector will benefit.

Ventilation has come blinking into the limelight because of the COVID-19 outbreak. For so long a ‘Cinderella’ service, it is now a topic of urgent discussion. Building managers are facing detailed questions about how they are improving airflows to help dilute airborne viral loads. While this has long been a key preoccupation for the ‘behind the scenes’ Estates and Facilities managers in healthcare properties, never before have these discussions come under such intense scrutiny. There is also a renewed focus on relative humidity (RH), because of growing evidence that viruses thrive when the indoor air is drier.

While these issues are concerning Estates and Facilities managers in buildings up and down the country, their implications are markedly more important in healthcare settings, where many of the occupants have supressed immunity. There is also greater recognition that building engineering professionals are key members of the wider healthcare team – and that therefore greater significance should be given to them using all the planned maintenance tools at their disposal.