The goal of this project was to provide a city office with appropriate advice on how to reopen at the end of the intelligent lockdown while keeping the risk of spreading Covid-19 to a minimum. Which measures should the city office implement to protect both employees and visitors while retaining the ability to get employees back to the office?
Objective
The city office had to take measures to minimize the risk of spreading COVID-19, which resulted in a lot of employees working from home. The city office expressed their wishes to encourage employees to work from the city office, which made additional measures to ensure health safety necessary. Nobleo Manufacturing has been asked to ensure this by simulating and evaluating different measures on employee and visitor flow.
Approach
In order to achieve an appropriate advice, Nobleo Manufacturing started with establishing a baseline of the pre-Corona situation of the crowd flow in the city office. Considering the arrival times of the employees and the visitors a baseline for the simulation model was created. Together with the city office, this model was evaluated and confirmed. The effect of potential measures could be evaluated on this baseline that mimics the reality of the current situation.
Subsequently, the situation with the same number of employees and visitors as the baseline was simulated, with the only difference that everyone takes the COVID-19 measures from the government, keeping 1.5 meters distance. The inflow of employees and visitors was too high at certain times and created congestion in crucial areas, meaning that safety could not be guaranteed. In particular elevators, which only had 1/3 of their regular capacity due to the distance regulations, created a capacity issue.
In co-operation with the city office, additional measures were found and simulated to present and analyse different scenarios. The scenarios are tested and evaluated, from which concrete measures were extracted.
Results
The performed experiments were evaluated through the following analyses:
- Waiting time analysis for stairs, entrances, and elevators
- Walking time and route analysis for both employees and visitors
- Graphical 3D displays of the different scenarios in the city office
The analyses have shown the effects of the safety measures:
- Inflow control of employees to suppress arrival peaks
- One-way routes to ensure safety for different areas in the city office
- Elevator usage control to make safer and more efficient use of the elevators
“Using our simulation experiences in the industrial sector, we were able to provide useful advice on how to manage employee and visitor flow.”
Berend Steenhuisen – Logistic Optimization Engineer