As we prepared to go back to the office post Circuit Breaker to living life with COVID 19, we found a design flaw in our open office design! People just came in willy nilly and it was not natural behavior to do the following:
- Check in using SafeEntry
- Use the self check temperature station (ok fine, is just a temperature gun with a log to record the reading)
- Use the hand santiser
- Remove their shoes before entering the general office area (just for general cleanliness la!)
Instead, people would just walk in and go direct to the closest individual and be all like “HELLO, IM HERE FOR XXX”. This wasn’t a major issue pre-COVID 19 but as with all other workplaces reconsidering their setups, this was a key issue that had to be addressed before reopening. Further, with our reduced workforce in office, all these measures would be moot if people were just running in and out.
Our original design had an allocated reception desk but with our glass doors, it felt too exposed for any poor soul to be facing the door all day. As such, we converted the area to fit a table to hold the temperature gun and logs. However, as there were no directional markers, visitors just bypassed the table.
As such, we decided to make use of our polyester acoustic panels to create some temporary partitions and to improve the general acoustics of our office space.
We originally wanted to fit a single 4ft x 8ft board with an aluminium/ stainless steel frame to create some sort of standing frame, similar to the photo below.
However, in the interest of time (and cost), we decided to construct it out of just the panels. This was overall more portable and flexible in the event that we wanted to vary the sizes of the partitions post covid in order to serve other purposes.
Also, it serves as an inbuilt sample bank! As such, we tried to incorporate as many colours as possible without it being too garish. The photo below shows intended purposes for temperature monitoring.
The short partitions are approximately 1m height and 2m length, comprising of a mix of black, blue and orange panels.
The tall partitions are approximately 2m height x 1.5m length to suit the length of the table, comprising of a mix of green, red, black panels.
We choose these colours based on the colour wheel.
The assembly was simple and took no time at all. This can be used for events just to quickly build up a wall to hide certain services instead of the usual dividers and it breaks down to small pieces for nominal storage. It can also be assembled in the open cell format on the right but it will not be as stable as the closed cell format assembled here.
Perhaps next month we will break down the short partition and reassemble it in the open cell format. Let us know if you would like to see it.
Cheers.
