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cat-uel msc (oct - nov 2001)

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Sick Building Syndrome: The impact of outsourcing facilities management

Unit 5 Course Work (February - April 2002)

Kirsty Burns

Charts & more information will be placed with this document this week.

The purpose of this essay is to investigate whether the contracting out of facilities management has had any effect, positive or negative, on working conditions within a specific office building.

Bessborough Tower is a seven-storey office sited built directly on top of Pimlico tube station, on the periphery of Central London. It was built in the mid 1970s, and is a sealed air conditioned open plan building. The building has been occupied by staff working for the Office for National Statistics (ONS) since the start of 1997, and throughout the last 5 years there have been many complaints about working conditions, especially on certain floors. ONS also occupied two neighbouring buildings on this site although one of these has since been given up.

In October 2000 the management of facilities was contracted out to a private company, and it appears that the number of complaints about conditions has increased since then. The Facilities Company are often criticised by staff on the Office's discussion database. Are conditions in Bessborough Tower deteriorating? What can be done improve the situation?

To start off this investigation an e-mail was sent to a key contact person working for the company, explaining the proposed investigation, requesting assistance in measuring specific indicators to evaluate sick building and suggesting a meeting to look at ways of improving conditions in the building. One idea was to ascertain whether the location of printers, photocopiers and other electrical equipment had a bearing on air quality in the building.

Sick Building Syndrome Survey

To gauge the current feeling of the building's occupants, they were invited to complete a questionnaire asking how they feel. Most of the questions came from a suggested questionnaire on the London Hazard Centre website1. The original LHC survey comprised forty five questions in four sections: demographic information (name, location, job type, smoking habits, working pattern & office equipment used), subjective evaluation of the working environment, health impairment symptoms, and the level of control over the environment. An additional five questions enquiring into psychosomatic issues was placed at the end of the questionnaire (see appendix for full list of questions).

To obtain a representative proportion of staff to participate, the option of randomly selecting a 10% sample of names from the corporate telephone directory was considered. Although it is possible to identify staff who are out of the office on long-term secondments or sickness absence there was no guarantee that a significant proportion of selected staff would respond within the relatively short timescale available. The most practical option was to invite as many staff as possible to participate.

The survey was made available to staff electronically on the union branch website & on the staff organisations Lotus Notes database. To publicise the survey, a link was e-mailed link to all 300 staff listed as working in Bessborough on the Office staff directory. A message was also placed on the official 'Daily' noticeboard. Staff were given seven days to reply to the survey, running from a Tuesday to the following Monday so that staff on leave during the first week, had the opportunity to take part.

Staff working in the other building and those based on other sites were also able to fill in the survey, and this was encouraged, as their responses could provide a useful comparison. However, the primary objective was to identify staff who worked in Bessborough and analyse their responses.

The instructions advised respondents to forward the document to the author by e-mail: this procedure makes the document editable so that an "x" can be placed in the appropriate box for each question. Staff who wished to remain anonymous could leave the name field blank, but they were also able to print off the survey, complete it manually and send back to the author by post.

Survey Results

73 staff from Bessborough responded2 to the questionnaire during the week long survey period. Although this is slightly less than a quarter of the potential total, this seemed a positive level of participation. A number of other people promised to reply but due to pressure of work were not able to do so before the deadline. As it was, a significant amount of work involved in processing these responses.

On each questionnaire there were over 200 boxes in which respondents could place crosses. This alone meant that there were around 15,000 spaces where an "x" could be placed. For most questions, only one "x" was expected on each row, but in section 3, there was a column to indicate whether a problem occurred more often in the afternoon. The questionnaire also included an unlimited space for additional comments. This allowed the respondents to explain in detail their feelings about the office environment, make suggestions and indicate who they felt was responsible for the problems.

Initially, each returned questionnaire was placed on separate worksheet; this meant that all the original information was stored in a consistent and organised way and any specific answers could be retrieved efficiently. Unfortunately, some of the lengthy additional comments were truncated because of the limited spreadsheet cell space available. A second spreadsheet was created, so that the data from the questionnaires were consolidated on a single spreadsheet. The majority of calculations and graphs used for analysis were placed on this spreadsheet too. These two Excel files were 2.1 MB and 2.7 MB in size respectively.

A roughly equal number of respondents chose either the webpage or Lotus Notes medium to send back their completed questionnaire. Four anonymous responses were received by post, and a few people responded by cutting and pasting the questionnaire into Excel or Word & returning it by e-mail as an attachment. This did not cause problems, as it was possible to cut & paste these answers into the spreadsheet/database used for analysing the data.

However, about 20 respondents used symbols other than "x" when the answering the questions. A considerable amount of time was spent checking and cleaning the data, as there were spaces appeared before or after the "x" in the answer box (i.e. " x" or "x "). These answers were not counted; searching and replacing "x" with "1" did not work either; so the spaces needed to be removed manually before the crosses were recognised as valid answers. Once the questionnaires data had been placed on one worksheet, it was possible to use the Excel 97 'DCOUNT' database function, to produce a tally of answers to each question (see appendix).

Both the pattern of responses and the range of comments demonstrated a wide divergence of opinion amongst staff in the building. Whilst many staff believe that the environmental conditions were responsible for their ailments, there were anomalies. One respondent in fact, praised the air conditioning system as excellent for clearing up pollen allergy symptoms which were affecting him on the journey to work.

Some of the charts produced to show the range of responses did not reveal any clear patterns: one possible reason was that the wording of answer options was too vague and arbitrary: what is the difference between "some" and "a little"? Would respondents be able to make a clear a distinction between "always" and "often"? To produce simpler graphs, some of the answer groups were aggregated.

Although the graph in figure 1 does not show information clearly, it was helpful in showing that always/often (blue line) answers were generally low. However, the results generated more questions than conclusive answers: if a significant number of staff report that they suffer from difficulty in breathing, nausea, chest pain and contact lens problems "sometimes" did this confirm sick building syndrome? Many other common signs of sick building syndrome, such as stuffiness, headache and lethargy scored high in the "never" answer choice.

Figure 1
(TO BE ADDED SHORTLY)

For the purpose of this investigation the most useful answers were responses to the question about whether the building was better or worse than a year ago (Figure 2). In April 2001 the FM company had had only been working in the building for a few months which might not be sufficient time enough to start tackling the tasks effectively. Now they have had well over an extra year to get used to the building and its problems.

Figure 2
(TO BE ADDED SHORTLY)

Whilst 22 people said that conditions had deteriorated (10 said "a little", 12 said "a lot"), 26 people, more than half the people who answered this question said it was more or less the same as a year ago.

Only three people thought that conditions had improved. In terms of staff perception, the net result is that the situation in the building hasn�t improved and the overall suggestion is that it may well be getting worse.

The questionnaire did not include any direct question about their performance, as it was felt this might alienate the FM companies staff and jeopardise the chance to persuade them to take on board constructive criticism and positive suggestions to help transform the building's environment.

Conclusions

The survey provided a valuable opportunity to identify a range of shortcomings in both the physical state of the building, and the way the accommodation facilities are being managed.

A variety of health & safety procedures can be used to tackle many of the issues raised: respondents have described hazards that have not been noticed, or certainly not dealt with, following the regular workplace inspections. A number of staff have not yet received the Display Screen Equipment Risk Assessments: since European Union regulations3 were introduced in the mid 1990s, every employer has a statutory obligation to assess the risks faced by their staff when using any computer workstations.

The survey created an enormous potential workload as there are a large number of queries that need to be answered and the survey has identified several issues that need chasing up with facilities management.

The facilities company contact did not reply to the initial e-mail or a reminder message three weeks later. A member of staff who used to work in FMU advised against further attempts to pursue this matter with the company. However, communication between building occupants and the people charged with running the buildings services is vital. Indeed, the breakdown of communication may be a significant factor in the dissatisfaction shown by many of Bessborough's occupants.

There is often a long delay between the time a call is logged with the helpdesk to the time the problem is resolved; sometimes the FMU staff rely too heavily on the information provided by basic recording instruments. When someone complains that it is too cold or too warm, the temperature on that zone is measured: if its within 20 0 - 24 0 Celsius, (well above the legal minimum 16 0 Celsius), the matter is closed. They do not take into consideration the fact that a low relative humidity and/or a draught may make it feel colder and frequently no action is taken. Staff morale falls as they cope with thermal discomfort by wearing their coat indoors throughout the day. When conditions become unbearably hot and stuff, staff on some floors have sought Allan keys to open windows: this may exacerbate conditions for other staff.

The answers and comments received in the survey demonstrates the microcosm of sick building symptoms that many office workers face across the world today. The wide range of explanations for sick building symptoms offered by the array of respondents to this questionnaire, are reflected elsewhere. There are no specific diagnoses, and no clinical end results: when problems arise, fears can escalate out of control. When a toilet malfunctions staff ask the safety reps whether "breathing in sewage" is harmful to their health. Some staff request the installation of air fresheners in the toilets, whilst others realise that the masking of odours is numbing the symptom rather than uncovering and solving the problem.

Communication with FMU

When an accommodation arises staff are required to log a call with facilities management unit (FMU) Helpdesk, either by telephone or e-mail. The FMU helpdesk was moved to another office at the time of changeover to outsourced facilities management.

When the FMU Helpdesk was dealt with by in-house staff at the London site, logged calls were passed on to a team of troubleshooters by walkie-talkie. Currently the calls are typed up by staff in the South Wales office & passed onto to London FMU and a confirmation e-mail is sent to the member of staff who logged the call, providing them with a incident number. This is useful as sometimes the call logs don't appear to be resolved & in theory at least, the incident number allows staff to check whether the problem is being dealt with.

However, the process is still cumbersome: during the last 5 years the Office has rolled out Lotus Notes interactive e-mail & database software to all staff. FMU set up a database facility which allows staff to book meeting rooms; staff are able to check which rooms are free in on a particular floor in a particular building or site. They can book refreshments; request security passes for external visitors and order equipment such as flipcharts or PowerPoint projectors. The library has created a similar database in which borrowed books are displayed: all staff can check which books they have borrowed, and which date they are due back.

FMU could investigate whether a similar system could be applied for all the incidents logged. Staff would be able to check the status of their incident on a database & FMU could use the facility to give a clear description of how they intend to resolve the problem.

Communication is the key

Whilst many actions need to be considered as part of a strategy to tackle problems in the office, the largest obstacle seems to be the lack of coherent communication.

The Facilities Management Unit was surprised at the angry response they received after installing air fresheners in meeting rooms. The automatic timed dispensers were switched-off and safety reps asked FMU to consult the local trade union side before implementing such initiatives. There have been numerous instances where FMU have withheld information about specific incidents: in March 2001 the water supply for a neighbouring building was cut off, and staff were advised to use toilets in Bessborough. Fumes entering the air conditioning system from the car park were identified as styrene but described as "harmless".

False economy

Throughout the 1990s both local and central government have been asked to make annual efficiency savings. The workload has increased, and layers of bureaucracy have been stripped. Many workers routinely accumulate unpaid hours of overtime in order to complete all the tasks assigned to them. Contracting out services such as facilities management is supposed to save money, but short of paying their staff lower wages, how can an external company make a profit and provide as efficient a service as the original in-house team? Poorly paid cleaners will not be able to provide the same standards of cleaning as their better paid and better trained colleagues.

Three-way process

The path towards a healthier office will requires a three-way dialogue between staff, the management of individual business areas, and the Facilities Management company. Health & Safety Meetings take place every quarter. However, since safety reps, charged with representing staff at these meetings, do not have access to any information about the number and nature of calls to FMU Helpdesk they are usually only able to raise issues arising from publicised incidents, accident book records or direct communication from staff. A request for monthly sick leave data for the last 2 years for staff in London was being actioned at the time of writing: this may provide evidence to help evaluate whether conditions in Bessborough are affecting the health of staff.

Further analysis from the sick building questionnaire and any follow-up surveys into office health issues (for instance the siting electrical equipment in relation to staff; the use of plants to improve morale3; the monitoring of humidity air quality and electromagnetic frequencies levels) could help generate some positive initiatives to improve conditions in the building.

Appendix 1

Sick building questionnaire

Part 1 Demographic information

Name:
Building/Floor/Room
Job type:
Smoking habits:
Hours per day spent in building
Office equipment used

Part 2: Subjective evaluation of working environment

(answer options: always, often, sometimes, never)
Too little air
Too much air
Too dry
Too moist
Too hot
Too cold
Too bright
Too dim
Glare on surfaces
Too noisy
Too quiet
Smoky
Stuffy
Unpleasant odours

Part 3: Health-impaired symptoms

Do you experience any of the following complaints in your workplace? Also, please indicate if the problem is consistently more common in the afternoon than in the morning. (answer options: always, often, sometimes, never, more common in the afternoon)
Dry or sore throat
Skin dryness
Skin rashes
Eye irritation
Contact lens problem
Runny nose
Stuffy nose
Difficulty in breathing
Chest tightness
Flu-like symptoms
Headache
Dizziness
Nausea
Drowsiness
Lethargy
Aches in arms
Chest pain
Backache
Menstrual problems
Impotence

Part 4: Degree of control over environment

(answer options: None, a little, some, mostly, complete)
Temperature
Ventilation
Humidity
Lighting
Noise

Note: 16 April 2002. Following advice from a member of staff at the London Hazard Centre I have amended section 5 of the questionnaire - for reference purposes the original questions are shown greyed out below:

Part 5: Psychosomatic issues

(answer options: None, a little, some, mostly, complete)
Do physical defects at work affect your overall mood/contentment?
Do you feel content/happy in your life in general?
Do you usually feel content/happy during your working week?
Do you experienced many variations in your moods in general?
Do you feel you experience greater mood swings when you are at work?

Better or worse?
Do you think conditions in the Office have improved or deteriorated during the last year? (answer options: improved a lot, improved a little, more or less the same, deteriorated a little, deteriorated a lot)

Appendix 2:

Respondents additional comments:

Considering the age of the building it is a dump. Lack of finance for maintenance and improvements have contributed to the sad state of the building. The blame lies solely with senior management. I've been waiting 18 months for fire warden training and so that can't be healthy for everyone else! The fact that you think the lifts are going to break/plummet through the floor adds to stress levels and you don't feel safe. I complained at one point that it was too cold, as have a blanket at work! to be told that it wasn't. We have microclimates and the drafts from air conditioning influence people differently. It is now far too hot, in fact we have all been wearing sleeveless shirts. . . There is no flexibility in controlling the lights or temperature. Obviously when you ring FMU. it will be done then.

The air conditioning in Bessborough is excellent in my view - I always find it refreshing and pleasant. In particular, at this time of year, I suffer from an allergy to oilseed rape fumes on the journey to work. No more than 10 minutes after getting in to work they have cleared. The big problems with Bessborough are: The lifts which are useless - so I always use the stairs which is healthier for me but not a possible solution for many people The toilets - which are often disgusting . They are frequently blocked. The hand dryers are useless so I have brought my own towel to work. And the bulk purchase loo paper dispensers are impossible to use easily.

It is valid to concentrate on environmental matters when carrying out a "Sick Building" audit; but there are other factors that come into play. All three of the key shared accommodation facilities on B7 (the lifts, the toilets, and the tea point) have succumbed. . I find the actual desk uncomfortable. The structure prevents me from "tucking myself under" and I can't get the chair high enough so that the keyboard is below my elbow level. Dizziness/nausea and some other problems can be due to factors unrelated to SBS so I have left those questions unanswered I have worked at ONS for 19 months. In that time I have had about 10 days off sick due to colds, throat infections & coughs. I believe that most of these infections have been caused by the environment that I work in. Before I joined ONS I was a lecturer. I have complained since moving to Bessborough about the drafts by my desk, but nothing has been done about it (as far as I know). I help myself by having a small electric fire under my desk and putting bits of card and materials where the draft is coming I find the environment in which I work very detrimental to my work, especially the noise, the lack of quiet places to work, the heat and stuffiness, and the lack of fresh air. The air conditioning system is overactive. I prefer to call it the draught system. The atmosphere in the building is much too dry. I don't yet know about Bessborough but if it's anything like Drummond Gate the temperature is generally OK except in the summer. I have had one illness after another since joining ONS. Before joining, I had only taken 1 sick day in nearly 2 years. Since arriving here, I have had to take 5 sick days in 6 months! (mainly for colds/flu type illnesses). I have also been for an eye Also I have suffered from insect bites around my ankles and have seen small black flies. I am not the only one who has experienced this in my area. When I mentioned it to someone else he said he had experienced the same problem when he first joined the office. Some of the questions are a little ambiguous, such as "Do physical defects at work affect your overall mood/contentment?" - I take it this refers to the building and not one's physical body. Also, mood swings will often depend on psycho-spiritual factors, I tend to find myself sneezing a lot in the office. I think this is because of all the dust rather than the ventilation system but it may be a bit of both I guess. Since working in London I have been off sick a few time with colds/flues and infections. I have never previously had and sick leave in other work places and feel it could have something to do with the air conditioning. Ergonomic furniture is a must. Not furniture just is only just within the limits of H & S I am so glad you have done this survey. I have suffered from dry skin and skin rashes, headaches and flu type symptoms since I moved into this building and I was tempted to ask others on the ONS Discussion if anyone else suffers like me but never got around to it. . . Worst problems are temperature and dryness, lack of cleaning (dust, dirt, germs), noise of air-conditioning We have recently moved desks, but the environment is the same as our previous area. Lots of outstanding issues from previous DSE assessment, mainly problems with lighting and heating, none of which were taken seriously or dealt with effectively by FMU. It How do we get action on DSE issues? I see the biggest problems with the Office not in its' physical structure - but in the failure of personnel to properly match people's academic abilities and interests to their job specifications. This leads to frustration and higher than necessary staff In the last 12 months there has been liquid from toilets leaking from the second floor down into the first floor, and problems with the sewer waste pipes below the ground floor causing smells to go up into the first floor. There are no toilets on the first floor. Problems with the teapoint and fire door took weeks, rather than days to resolve. Staff on B1 also use furniture that is not suitable and that needs to be replaced - our divisional director may be buying new furniture to resolve this problem, but no date for this new furniture and its installation has been given. I feel that, has similar problems been found on floor occupied by higher-grade staff, that they would have been resolved much more quickly. Appendix 3: Additional information Suggestions for resolving sick building syndrome in Bessborough Removing water stained ceiling & carpet tiles, When conditions are particularly poor: switch off the air conditioning & allowing staff to open windows Introducing more plants, which may or may not help improve air quality but which should have a positive psychological impact for staff. Allowing staff to go home when conditions become intolerable. Increase awareness of problems when new furniture introduced - purchasing quality furniture - solid wood whenever practicable; When new material is introduced, allow sufficient time for off-gassing of toxins - open windows, or mechanically increase air flow Audit the chemicals used for cleaning offices MSc Architecture: Environment & Energy Studies Unit 5 Essay Sick Building Syndrome PAGE 11 April 2002 1 London Hazard Centre (n.d.) Sick Building Syndrome: Questionnaire HYPERLINK http://wwwwlhc.org.uk/members/pubs/books/sbs/sba2.htm http://wwwwlhc.org.uk/members/pubs/books/sbs/sba2.htm Date accessed 3 April 2002 2 Further information on the survey results available at: HYPERLINK http://www.geocities.com/kirstysburns/msc/sickbuilding.htm http://www.geocities.com/kirstysburns/msc/sickbuilding.htm 3 The Health & safety (Display Screen Equipment) regulations 1992 HYPERLINK http://www.hse.gov.uk/law/lacs/16-1.htm http://www.hse.gov.uk/law/lacs/16-1.htm 4 HYPERLINK http://www.ens-news.com/ens/jan2000/2000L-01-13-01.html http://www.ens-news.com/ens/jan2000/2000L-01-13-01.html Indoor Plants May Not Cure Sick Building Syndrome, Environment News Service (ENS) 2000. 13 Jan 2000 Perth, Australia EMBED Excel.Sheet.8 EMBED Excel.Sheet.8

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