Saltmine, a real estate technology company transforming workplace design by integrating data, people, and process into their enterprise design cloud platform, is announcing new social distancing features that will help businesses reconfigure workspaces for the safe return of their employees.
As workers come back to their offices after weeks of sheltering in place, businesses are scrambling to put new workplace designs and policies in effect that will minimize the risk of further Covid-19 transmission. The World Economic Forum has said businesses worldwide must rethink all of their workplace policies in the wake of the pandemic—especially the design of offices.
There are more than 5 million commercial buildings—and more than 80 billion square feet of floor space—in the United States alone, and a significant percentage will need to be redesigned because of concerns about virus transmission.
Some business leaders believe new distancing guidelines will put a premium on office space, which will need to be reimagined with both efficiency and safety in mind.
“Businesses are planning for workplace reentry, but those who haven’t moved their design process into the cloud will be behind the curve,” said Shagufta Anurag, CEO of Saltmine. “Offices will likely need to be redesigned repeatedly as we learn more about the spread of Covid and the rules change. Only businesses with a digital infrastructure in place using an enterprise design cloud—an enterprise design cloud where their data and other assets are digitized and all in one place—will be able to react to changes quickly, and stay agile long after the pandemic has passed.”
The Saltmine Design Cloud enables global enterprises to digitize the sprawling and fragmented data related to workplace design. Saltmine maintains a dedicated design cloud for each of their clients, which include some of the world’s largest workplace occupiers as well as leading architecture and design firms and real estate service firms whose teams have been trained on the Saltmine platform to support their customers. Twenty-five million square feet and counting have been run through Saltmine, with companies using the technology to plan their re-entry to the workplace.
Using their design clouds, these clients centralize their design guidelines, digitize their workplace portfolio, and activate this data with purpose built applications for programming, space planning, budgeting, and more.
The Saltmine platform can take floor plans from any format and turn them into a 3D, immersive digital model of the workplace. Work points, conference rooms, and social areas are identified by the system and “distance rings” can be automatically applied. The technology automatically detects collisions, and algorithms instantly optimize the number of work points to maximize headcount while following that organization’s social distance policies.
Anticipating a return to the workplace in phases, Saltmine enables companies to quickly design office spaces for various stages of workplace re-entry, planning for and adapting designs in minutes as more employees return to offices.
The technology can also update its criteria for social distance requirements so that when new data emerges or updates occur, Saltmine customers can easily integrate these new requirements.
