As businesses across the country continue to develop, scale and modify their Return-to-Work plans, the Aeronautical Center’s (MMAC) Office of Facility Management (AMP) is no different than the rest. Many employees within AMP have devoted countless hours in planning, developing, implementing and monitoring such plans.

A multi-disciplinary approach was key because many organizations were vital in developing plans for returning to work, namely: Legal, Environmental Health and Safety, Human Resources, and Information Technology. Additionally, input from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Oklahoma County Health Department, the Department of Transportation and the Federal Aviation Administration were taken into consideration. Aligning the Federal Agency Operations with the National Guidelines for Opening Up America Again, has been no easy task.

Shelly Fuller, the Lead Facility Information Specialist (AMP-100) in AMP works with ARCHIBUS. It is a software application that is used throughout the world, which provides a range of infrastructure and facilities management solutions. The program is integrated with AutoCAD facility drawings, and has been used by AMP at MMAC since 2004 for many facility management business needs. ARCHIBUS has provided an innovative way for the Aeronautical Center to configure a viable Return-to-Work strategy.

When managing a large facility like the Aeronautical Center, it is important to know where organizations and employees are located. AMP also provides ARCHIBUS space management to FAA headquarters in Washington D.C. and the FAA Regional Offices throughout the U.S. (roughly equating to 16,000 employees and 8.1M square feet that is currently tracked in ARCHIBUS).

During the COVID-19 world health emergency, one of the initial requirements was to determine how many signs would be required in order to effectively communicate safety strategies to onsite employees. ARCHIBUS was already being used to classify areas with different room types across each floor of the space portfolio. This allowed AMP to use information that was readily available within the program to report counts (based on certain room types). For instance, using ARCHIBUS, facility managers could quickly determine how many elevators are located throughout the Center, because AMP needed to post signage relating to COVID-19 safety requirements near all elevators.

There was also a need for track Return-to-Work Schedules to identify employees who planned to work onsite or who would telework during the different phases of the Return-to-Work plans (not only at MMAC, but also in the FAA Regional Offices and Headquarters).

While the majority of the Aeronautical Center workforce is currently on full-time teleworking status, there are some employees who are using Alternating Work Schedules (some only coming into the office a few days a week and teleworking the rest of the week, and some still coming to work in the office every day). There was a strong need to know how employees would come back to work, whether they’d be using phased-in approaches, (including dates of when employees would transition from full-time telework to working at the Center).

It was also important to know the number of employees who planned to work during weekdays in the office (who were working mixed onsite/telework schedules). Shelly expressed "With ARCHIBUS, we wanted to provide a way to know if employees are back in the office, where they are located, and if they are too close to each other."

ARCHIBUS now allows organizations and facility managers to identify employees who are planning to work onsite during the different phases of the Return-to-Work plans. ARCHIBUS floorplan drawings are highlighted to show the areas where employees will be located onsite, which allows for appropriate planning to help ensure distancing is maintained between coworkers. Using this platform, Shelly and team constructed time-based content and reporting, (i.e. what is occurring today vs. what the plan is for a month from now).

Like most systems, the data is only as good as what is put into it. Thanks to the coordinated effort between management and Space point of contacts within organizations, ARCHIBUS is updated to reflect each organization’s return to work plans for their employees. Due to limited licensing, ARCHIBUS access is limited to facility management personnel and Space point of contacts within organizations.

Thanks to innovative ways of using the system, employees are assigned a coded category according to the schedules that they work, which allows for more accurate contact-tracing of the coronavirus. Information can be filtered down to include work schedules, buildings and specific dates.

ARCHIBUS has proven to be a means of developing trend analysis data and assisting with social distancing measures. While originally used for one purpose, the data has proven to be useful in other ways. Shelly comments, "If we see a spike in the number of COVID cases going up – we can compare it to data, see how many employees were on site at the time, and provide notifications where needed."