Air quality in the office, a health and productivity issue.

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Aug 5, 2023

5 min

Temperature, humidity or CO2 levels, how can we improve the quality of life at work through these collected data?

I suggest that you unfold our remarks in 3 parts:

Revelation : feedback on a concrete case
Confirmation : the calculation of a cost
Solution : deployment of a prototype

Before we start, we would like to take this opportunity to thank GA Smart Building for trusting us with a data set as well as for the authorization to communicate on the subject.

*(LCI credit: Impact of temperature and humidity on COVID-19)*

Revelation: a look back at a concrete case

As mentioned, 10:11 had the opportunity to work with GA Smart Building on a data set of an ultra-modern building with sensors allowing the measurement of temperature, humidity and CO2 levels.

To facilitate awareness related to this study, I suggest that you focus on the CO2 level, which provided us with the most convincing elements of reflection. Indeed, not that humidity and temperature are not major health issues in offices (see references at the end of the article), the data from the study building concerning these two parameters remained in accordance with health standards.

On the other hand, the CO2 level proved more difficult to control.

We analyzed 42 environments in the building under study. By environment, we mean meeting rooms, closed offices, open-spaces and finally so-called “diverse” spaces (for example reception hall)

*Graphs showing the air quality of the environments under study.*

The chart below is hard to read, I agree. Each graph represents an environment under study. Simply, if you look at the number of peaks that exceed the famous red line on each graph, you will understand that CO2 exceeds 1,000 ppm. This value of “> 1,000 ppm” is considered excessive or even harmful to work with.

What is ppm?

The acronym” ppm ” means” Parts per million ”. It is a unit of measurement used by scientists to calculate the level of pollution in the air. As its name seems to suggest, ppm allows us to know the number of pollutant molecules that we can find in a million air molecules. By this measure, this indicator makes it possible to report in an understandable way the quantity of pollution in a given air mass and at the same time the harmful impact of these pollutants on the atmosphere.

So why the red barrier on the 1,000 ppm chart?

In 2016, Harvard published a scientific study with the following objective:

We simulated indoor environmental quality (IEQ) conditions in “Green” and “Conventional” buildings and evaluated the impacts on an objective measure of human performance: higher-order cognitive function (source available at the end of the article).

The results of the study include the following metrics:

“Cognitive function scores were 15% lower for the moderate CO2 day (~ 945 ppm) and 50% lower on the day with CO2 concentrations of ~1,400 ppm”

“On average, a 400-ppm increase in CO2 was associated with a 21% decrease in a typical participant's cognitive scores across all domains after adjusting for participant”

According to this study, cognitive functions are therefore strongly impacted in their performance when a subject is in an environment subject to a ppm level greater than 1,000 ppm.

We've summarized the previous graph in a new graph below that averages the environments:

Les offices (top left), the various (top right), the open spaces (bottom left) and the meeting rooms (bottom right).
The red 1,000 ppm bar is still present.
As you can see, we exceed 1,000 ppm by a significant proportion during the hours of the day in each category of environment observed.

Thus, working conditions are not optimal or even problematic to allow 100% cognitive functions for employees in this building.

Considering the modernity of the observed building, we can imagine that it is not the only building in the world to suffer from such a CO2 level problem.

So, in addition to the health aspect, how to consider this issue in an economic way for the company?

Confirmation: calculating a cost

Based on the elements observed in part 1 of this article, we suggest that you take an economic look at the subject. We know that the health issue is important for businesses and the accelerations to improve them are all the more intense when they make it possible to save money or to optimize profitability.

So, based on the study conducted, we considered the time when the ppm was between 1000 and 1400 and the time when the ppm was between 1400 and more.

On this basis, we applied the losses in cognitive ability measured during the Harvard study (previously mentioned) considering this loss attributable to the subject's productivity. Indeed, when you are in a meeting room, if your cognitive abilities are degraded, the objective of the meeting as well as its result may also be degraded.

If we consider an average cost per hour/employee of 17€ (value for example), of 2.5 people on average per meeting and if we apply the loss of cognitive abilities in proportion, this gives us the following results:

In total, on the building studied, with the parameters mentioned above, the gain for the company can be €1,000/month per meeting room. And this, in addition to improving air quality.

Gain for the employee in terms of health, gain for the company in terms of productivity, this winning analogy gives good hope for creating solutions to ensure that the ppm level stays below 1,000.

Let's look at the prototype designed by the 10:11 teams.

Solution: deployment of a prototype

Some solutions obviously exist in the world of IOT to measure CO2, temperature and humidity in a room. However, once the measurements are made, nothing happens. Employees are not aware of it and data is often stored without being exploited.

The interest of data lies in its exploitation. Data must be a material to be transformed into knowledge, and technology the lever to bring this knowledge to the eyes of the interested subject.

In our case, the executive of a building is obviously interested in having access to this knowledge but it is especially the users of the building who must be informed in real time of this knowledge, in our case, the CO2 level.

Indeed, when this level exceeds 1,000 ppm, it is good to know. It is even better to use this knowledge to put it in the eyes of the user present in the room in question so that he can act and regulate the air in the room. This can be done by leaving the door open, by opening a window if possible or by starting the ventilation.

In its prototyping, 10h11 imagined a device allowing measurement in each room concerned, all connected to a dashboard allowing to alert as well as to monitor the measurements in real time.

In this way, the user would know in real time if he is in a room that requires an adjustment of the CO2 level and what actions to take to remedy it.

The building speaks out and takes care of its users.

Obviously, another technological option would be to proceed from machine to machine, ensuring that the building's air regulation system is aware of CO2 levels in real time and automatically adjusts the air quality accordingly. We are also working on this hypothesis with some actors, however, not all buildings yet have the architecture that allows for an efficient machine to machine.

This dynamic is part of the movement that we could call “API building”, in other words, a building speaks like an API to communicate the information it has. This metaphor makes it possible to give computer life to a building and to imagine the exploitation of its data for any authorized technology.

In view of the challenges of health as well as economic gain related to the subject of air quality and the level of CO2 in buildings, our team remains at your disposal to make progress on the implementation of solutions as well as pilots on any type of building.

Hopefully this article will allow you to better understand the subject. Any comments are obviously welcome to advance solutions on the subject.

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