ASHRAE Journal - February 2022 - 32

ROUNDTABLE
I think we felt there was definitely a bit of a communication
problem. I think there were a lot of people in the
general public that were much more worried than they
should have been about some situations. Airplanes, for
example, do a relatively good job of isolating the passengers
to the extent that you can when you're on an airplane.
But they're already doing the things that needed
to be done in this case. On an airplane, you're not necessarily
at that much risk unless you're sitting right next to
an infected person.
The thing that I definitely learned is there are some
forms of transportation that were just woefully unprepared
or ill-equipped to respond to the pandemic. There
have been some famous cases there that are a little bit
shocking how the HVAC systems in those buses have
been allowed to deteriorate. The same goes to a certain
extent perhaps for trains and shipboard-type transportation
as well. I felt comfortable flying based upon what I
learned from the transportation team. I did actually fly a
few times during the pandemic and didn't feel too much
at risk.
So that was one of my really big takeaways-that we
have a lot of work to do to protect people better from
these sort of respiratory infections.
Wade Conlan (Building Readiness): It became apparent
to a lot of individuals when we saw the lack of understanding
of the equipment and systems that people
actually had within their facilities-let alone even having
them understand how well they were operating-or how
poorly they were operating-and whether they actually
provided outdoor air. I think that was a big eye opener
for a lot of other people.
Another one was trying to understand and get people
to shift how they would evaluate something for an
implementation. More times than not, people are making
decisions based strictly on energy. Having them
understand the balance between indoor air quality (IAQ)
and energy when you're doing this-really looking at cost
versus risk reduction versus energy versus availability of
the different measures-was a balance that needed to be
created for people. Because of the multitude of systems
out there, there were just infinite options.
The last one was how to determine what we tagged as
equivalent, outdoor air or clean air in the Wells-Riley
equation, how to evaluate your system for how much
quantity you have as well as looking at the systems
as they're operating to see how much you're actually
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F E B R U A RY 2022
delivering to the space. It was done for flushing for the
building readiness, but I think it really lends itself also to
when the space is occupied.
Bahnfleth: From my perspective, the first thing I'd
note is that we found buildings of all types are not really
COVID-ready. There weren't many cheap, quick options
for getting buildings to where we want them to be,
which is something of an indictment of our approach to
minimum standards that we might want to deal with in
the future in case something like this happens again-
which it will, eventually.
Another thing that has struck me is the low level of
understanding of indoor air quality, not just amongst
the public, but amongst professionals too. That's a consequence
of how we educate the people who design, construct
and operate buildings. That's been a significant
impediment to a timely and effective response.
The third lesson I've learned is that, strangely, no
matter how bad things are, there is reluctance to do
anything to upgrade buildings that involves significant
investment. We're almost two years into the pandemic,
and many who are still trying to figure out what they're
going to do, or if they're going to do anything. I get the
feeling that many owners have been hoping it's going
to end soon. And then when it doesn't end soon, they
hope it's going to end pretty soon. It seems there is a
widely-held feeling that we can just go back to normal
afterward. That has big implications for whether we're
actually going to be able to change things in the future,
and it's something to keep in mind. We shouldn't assume
that everyone's going to say, " Oh, yes, let's change all of
our standards and really upgrade the way that we design
buildings for resilience and for indoor air quality. "
Bahnfleth: What are the implications of these lessons
learned for changes to standards and guidance?
Conlan: I think the biggest things that you're going to
see is an adjustment to outdoor air. And since Standard
62 in code is really for acceptable indoor air quality,
are we going to try and push something that would be
beyond that? I also think that code wise-and we've seen
it in California-is the filtration levels for just typical
buildings and the potential for those to be increased.
Bahnfleth: From what you've learned, what should
change? Not " Will it? " but " Should it? "
Conlan: I'll go back to the fact that people didn't
understand how their buildings worked. I think what
should change is that owners should actually have a
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