Ann Arbor Times

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, as schools and businesses examine the best way to reopen while meeting restrictions related to the crisis, firms such as HKS, a global architectural design firm, are working to meet their needs.

Alison Avendt, the senior operations advisor with HKS, recently spoke on WJR’s "The Paul W. Smith Show" about what her company is doing to help get organizations back to business.

Avendt, who Smith introduced as his sister, said that HKS does most of its work with the health care industry. Even though they are an architectural firm, much of what they consider is simply how the existing infrastructure can best be used, rather than something like a full redesign.

"As COVID started, we were drawn to the research and looking at, how is this impacting health care?” she told Smith. “But we started to get questions from our other clients -- schools and other businesses that we work with -- to see if we could help them as they struggle to get kids back in school.”

When Avendt looked at the efforts being made to assess and mitigate risks associated with COVID-19, she saw how the work HKS already does would fit the needs schools and businesses have. Particularly, they can offer perspective on going beyond just doing what it takes to get to that first day of reopening.

“There’s looking at today -- what are we going to do to get kids back? -- and then there’s looking at the future, the longer term,” she told Smith. “What are we as a country going to do in our communities to be more resilient? How can we maintain life and learning through a pandemic?”

Avendt said that they look at the variety of ways studies have shown the coronavirus may be transmitted, as well as factors such as group density and time spent in proximity that could affect risk.

"So taking all that information, our researchers and our clinicians within the company, we’ve created a risk profile where we can look at activities within the school and rate them as high-, medium- and low-risk activities,” she told Smith.

For instance, something such as choir practice would be considered high-risk due to the combination of risk factors. Simply opening windows or moving the practice outside where there is more air flow can reduce that risk.

Other mitigation might be permitting an older staff member who is at risk, such as a professor or teacher, to provide lectures and lessons from home via a screen in the classroom, Avendt suggested.