Aug 19, 2020
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Meet Pamela Greenley, Environment, Health & Safety Office Director, at Draper ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ➖As an essential business, how have you responded to the challenges of protecting employees? Being a major defense operator for the government, private industry and academic sectors, Draper has maintained operations throughout the pandemic. Our response was quick. To protect employees and ensure business continuity, company leadership formed a COVID Task Force that has continued to meet daily and implement safety measures that have become standard: thermal temperature self-checks, safety posters and signage, mandatory mask-wearing, social distancing, disinfection stations on every floor, more-frequent cleaning of high-traffic public spaces, and much more. Our experience has lessons for others laying the groundwork for the day when employees return to their facilities in force. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ➖What were some challenges facing Draper employees? Employees, of course, rarely sit in one place all day. Because the pandemic has focused attention on people movement, Draper has developed a track-and-trace algorithm, powered by artificial intelligence, which management uses to understand day-to-day trends and crunch the data further for its safety forecast. The goal is to maintain the headcount of employees onsite at a number that meets the needs of the business (currently about 400) but avoid too many people in the building. Another benefit from this algorithm is that we will know immediately where confirmed COVID-19 cases are and who has been exposed. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ➖What sources have informed Draper’s pandemic protocols and best practices? Draper developed its pandemic protocol in part by adopting guidelines from local authorities in Cambridge and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, International Facilities Management Association and the National Restaurant Association. Employees have also shared their own suggestions, which has led to the installation of Plexiglass panels between lab personnel and implementing staggered shifts. Anyone working in an open floor office can understand the challenge. #kendallcollective

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