Leigh Stringer is the Managing Principal of the EYP Washington, DC office, an architecture, engineering, and building technology firm. Leigh uses her sustainability and architecture expertise to help her clients think differently about the workplace and the environment. She has written two best-selling books, The Healthy Workplace and The Green Workplace, and has been interviewed for her work by CNN, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and Good Morning America. Leigh is also the Founder of WomanUp, an organization that leverages women’s power to create progressive steps for women running for office.
Here’s a Glimpse of What You’ll Learn:
- Leigh addresses how COVID has affected her and her family
- How are medical offices and doctors approaching telemedicine?
- Trends in facility management and health management in business offices
- How do we evaluate the choice to help your employees stress less?
- Creating awareness in your facility
- Leigh recalls how she got into her field
- What does it mean to have a great work culture?
- Man and Machine: How will technology affect our future?
- What is WomanUp?
- Leigh’s advice on how to connect to others in your field
In this Episode:
How do you sustain a healthy office culture through Zoom calls, virtual happy hours, and game nights? Our understanding of what makes companies successful happens in the workplace, but what if that was no longer an option? What would you do? Leigh Stringer is a two-time best-selling author and architect with a unique focus on what happens in the office and how to maintain a healthy and sustainable workplace.
In this week’s episode of Watching Paint Dry, Greg Owens interviews Leigh Stringer, Managing Principal at EYP, DC Office, to discuss the unique blend between creating a sustainable workplace and improving office culture. Leigh recalls the burnout and subsequent sabbatical that taught her about healthy workplace culture. She also discusses her role in WomanUp and the future of technology and human interaction.
Resources Mentioned in this Episode:
- Greg Owens on LinkedIn
- McCarthy Painting
- McCarthy Painting Contact No.: 415-383-2640
- McCarthy Painting Email Address: info@mccarthypainting.com
- Leigh Stringer on LinkedIn
- Leigh Stringer
- The Green Workplace by Leigh Stringer
- The Healthy Workplace by Leigh Stringer
- EYP
- Drive by Daniel Pink
Sponsor for this Episode:
This episode is brought to you by McCarthy Painting, where we serve commercial and residential clients all around the San Francisco Bay area.
We’ve been in business since 1969 and served companies such as Google, Autodesk, Abercrombie & Fitch, FICO, First Bank, SPIN, and many more.
If you have commercial facilities in the San Francisco Bay Area and need dependable painters, visit us on the web at www.mccarthypainting.com or email info@mccarthypainting.com, and you can check out our line of services and schedule a free estimate by clicking here.
Episode Transcript
Intro 0:03
Welcome to the Watching Paint Dry podcast where we feature today’s top facility managers, property managers and property owners talking about the challenges and opportunities of managing hundreds of thousands of square feet of real estate and how to beautify and improve their properties. Now, let’s get started with the show.
Greg Owens 0:32
Hello, there it is. Wednesday, August 26 2020. Greg Owens with the podcast Watching Paint Dry. I am actually not in the San Francisco Bay area right now where I usually am. I’m in Asheville, North Carolina at my mom’s house. It’s really good to be here in the in the lush green part of the country and the There’s a lot of fires and there’s a lot of things out there. So I hope everybody is safe and being safe and getting some fresh air as you can back in the Bay Area. We are continuing our conversations with building owners, property managers and those that support both facility managers, building owners and property managers. There’s a lot of unique challenges they are patient facing and these opportunities in this global pandemic and 2020, which is turning out to have all kinds of interesting challenges. Almost every week, something new seems to be happening. This episode is brought to you by McCarthy painting, where we serve residential commercial painting throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. We’ve done work for Google for spin for Autodesk and many many other companies. And we also do residential painting too. You can find out more about McCarthy painting By going to mccarthypainting.com or info@mccarthypainting, I am really excited to have on our podcast today. Leigh Stringer is the principal at the EYP and architecture, engineering and building technology firm. She is a powerhouse. She’s written two best selling books. One is The Green Workplace: Sustainable Strategies That Benefit Employees, the Environment, and the Bottom Line. And the other book is The Healthy Workplace: How to Improve the Well-Being of Your Employees. And she’s also the founder of WomanUp and we’ll find out more about what that is. And it’s also happy women’s equality day today. So go figure. Welcome to the podcast Leigh.
Leigh Stringer 2:59
I’m honored to be Thanks for having me.
Greg Owens 3:01
Yeah, I’m so how are things for you? You’re in the Washington DC area, how are things for you, your family during this these times?
Leigh Stringer 3:14
Well,
like a lot of people are working differently, thinking about life a little differently over the last, what, five months at this point. Since March, a lot of us went home, my firm sent everybody home mid arch. And we’ve been there ever since. And so it’s a little bizarre not to be seeing my colleagues on a regular basis. Although we have been really good about keeping in touch virtually it’s still it’s just different, right? She’s totally different. The way we communicate and how often and, and what we’re communicating about. We’re just learning new tools and new behaviors. And that’s been really fascinating. My kids have been distance learning. I have to grow 14 nine, and they’ve been just as learning last semester last spring, and they’re about to do so again in the fall. So in DC, most of the schools are out for the next couple of months. While we look at, you know, the Rh factor or whatever it is, like, yeah.
Greg Owens 4:23
There seems to be a lot of different factors they’re looking at, it’s never clear which ones are choosing next.
Leigh Stringer 4:31
Yeah, I mean, I know, it ultimately is just waiting for a little bit more sustainable solution, or a vaccine or, or, or cure, you know, we’ll take that too.
Greg Owens 4:41
Yeah.
Leigh Stringer 4:42
But the numbers are better. People have been behaving themselves. People tend to wear masks around here. And it’s funny, my brother came up a few weeks out, and he lives in Oregon. And, you know, they’ve had very had at the time had very few cases and of course, they were wearing masks and being buried. You know great about it, if you’ve just got off a plane, like, Don’t come to my house. So, you know, kind of this, the new protocol around how to behave around even your family like we were hugging our family, right and see my brother in a year or more, and it was weird. It was weird. So again, changing, changing the way we think and the way they behave around each other. It’s it’s really, it’s a challenge. And not everybody feels the same way or the same comfort level. And
Greg Owens 5:27
yeah, yeah, I noticed that too, because I just flew from San Francisco to Asheville last week, and everybody was wearing masks on the plane. Everybody was wearing a mess in, in the airport. I mean, when they’re eating and stuff, they were taking them down. But you know, it was all really it was odd and awkward and that kind of stuff, but it was good. And then as soon as I got off the plane, I was waiting outside the small town Asheville airport, and I was watching people exit the airport to see relatives. And then they would do this whole like to be hugged. We don’t know And most of them though, were like hugging and like off with the mass. And I’m like, Oh, so this is how it spreads, right? They, you’re, you’re not comfortable around strangers. But as soon as you get around family you’re like, I’m comfortable or, and I myself went and got tested before coming here. My mother is on in those are older age category. So it’s very concerned and was able to get a test and then wait a few more days and then came here and then we even even she and I didn’t hug or do anything like that we wore masks the first couple of days around each other. But then we’re like, this seems so silly, right like him off the game.
Leigh Stringer 6:41
Well, I feel like there’s this balance between your physical health and your mental health. Right? And and everything’s a calculated risk. Going to CVS is a calculated risk, you know, seeing your mom is a calculated risk. And I think for a lot of people who’ve been isolated, it’s you know, that’s Really bad and traumatizing. And so, you know, to kind of continue to isolate people behind glass wall or whatever, you know, in their house or wherever they happen to be living. That seems really, you know, humans need each other. We really do.
Greg Owens 7:16
They do they kind of go daddy if they don’t have that. Yeah, we’ve all seen it. Right. We’ve all seen it. Yeah, and I forgot to mention, we have Katrina Hayes, who’s part of McCarthy painting, and she helps with this podcast and business development from McCarthy painting. And Katrina and I were talking right before this call about the challenges of working from home and the new environment. And it’s not it’s not something you can quite I find that we can’t quite put our finger on what it is and why it’s so much harder, but because it’s new, what’s your been your experience around those challenges working in working from home
Leigh Stringer 8:00
Well, when I was in the office, I moved around a lot, just as part of my job, you know, meeting to meeting meeting with people very people centric job, my job is to connect people. So you know, the fact that I’m doing so from a monitor just feels really odd. and not necessarily those fortuitous, you know, contacts that that you’d normally have really, really difficult to do. Just seeing the same four walls also just really monotonous. I mean, as a workplace strategist, I would never recommend doing that. Diversity of choice and, you know, moving around is really good for our body, good for our brain good for creativity and you know, these important things and the fact that you know, most of us don’t necessarily have a ton of settings in our home, we can move around in you know, the kids of that area. My husband’s over here. I got my turf, you know, not really able to move around too much. I will say there have been a number of people including myself who are using The outdoors more than we ever thought we’d be using. There’s one guy I work with who lives in Austin, who gets out into the high rise. He’s just out on his porch. It’s like, yeah, it’s got up to 105 a day, but I like it out here. Like it’s private, private sanctuary outside, and he’s to set up his desk out there. So I think that’s been really neat. to kind of watch the movement of our perception of what an office really is all about what it looks like and feels like it’s it’s bigger now. For can be bigger.
Greg Owens 9:33
Yeah, it
Leigh Stringer 9:35
was, you know, living situation. If I was in New York City in a tiny apartment, I think I would feel really trapped, you know, because you go outside, you run into people there. So, you know, maybe it’s a little bit better now. But anyway, yeah.
Greg Owens 9:48
Yeah. And I know in San Francisco, I was just talking to friends and they say it’s empty. It’s emptying out like the this the residents are moving out and finding other places to live because of that reason. They’re in Like a one bedroom or two bedroom apartment, you work for Google, they work for Facebook and they make enough money and they’re like, I don’t need to live here. I can live in taco now.
Leigh Stringer 10:09
Well, there’s an untethering. And you know, it’s good and bad. And the one since you can live further outwards, less expensive, and there’s more room and yeah, family has more benefits or are better schools, whatever it is that you’re looking for, right? And then you don’t feel like you have to go in every day and make that hour and a half long commute. It’s just very wonderful. And I think, you know, as a, as a manager, kind of somebody who does a lot of recruiting in my own company, I think a lot about where I’m going to get the next round of talent. And I’m my lens is much wider. You know, I’m really thinking more about, well, does it matter where they live? I don’t think it does. So,
Greg Owens 10:49
right, right, especially as we get more and more used to this medium in a way, right. Tell us about EYP. The architectural engineering Cuz I know you have multifaceted things that you have your hands in. And this is your principal place of work.
Leigh Stringer 11:06
It is. So I work for a firm that is full on architecture full on engineering, full service, interiors, graphics, we do a lot of a lot of work in modernizing buildings. And in particular, you know, older buildings and just reimagining re envisioning what they are. And also, a lot of our clients, I should say, are mission driven, and they’re in their buildings for the long haul. So, hi, red science buildings, hospitals, government buildings, these are buildings that you know, people are willing to make some investment in stuff so they don’t have leased space in real estate. And that’s much more fluid and flexible. There’s a course you know, they have that too. But it’s been interesting, especially in these times of COVID. You know, like, what, what really matters right now and then what makes sense to spend money on in the long haul Because if you’re a mission driven organization, it’s not like money is falling from the ceiling. There are budgets there are, you know, things that really your mission is what’s most important and the building is nice, it’s important. But it really it’s spending money on it has to be much more long sighted, I think, than in a lot of other maybe kinds of kinds of building owners and clients.
Greg Owens 12:22
And we’re seeing a lot of like, for my painting business, we’re seeing a lot of like tightening up and not spending of money. Um, there wasn’t the beginning of this whole thing. But lately, as we’re coming kind of as this goes on, there’s been lessening of that, right? So in the beginning, they’re like, Okay, let’s do all these projects that we had, like, thought about and were listed, and let’s get them done because they’re empty. You know, it was great. But now it seems like the capital spending is slowing down or you guys seem a little bit of that within your firm or is it still?
Leigh Stringer 12:56
Yeah, it depends on the sector. So I’d say You know, we’re fortunate that our government clients are pretty well funded, you know, where there’s a mechanism in place to fund them right now and there’s full steam ahead, you know, which is which is really great. You know, some big projects, which are really keeping us going and I think there are other sectors like healthcare, for example, that has really slowed down, they will come back, but you know, I mean, a lot of them are dependent on elective surgeries and those went away when COVID really pursued it for a while, they’re just not catching up, you know, a lot of telephones or a lot of telemedicine, you know, and then all those telemedicine calls turned into follow up visits which turned into you know, surgeries and other things that people have been maybe postponing. So there’s this whole catch up period now and so they’re waiting to, to really spend money and again, spending it where it really matters most. And that means patients you know, rather patient areas particular and safety and focus on patient safety and there’s a lot of role innovative thinking, you know, not necessarily involving buildings but you know, people in cars, you know, getting notifications about when they can come in for, you know, their surgery or when they can come in to see their physician or caregiver and to minimize risk within the building. So there’s this kind of a little more expansive view and a lot of our economic Middle School center clients are sending buses out into the region, you know, and, and, and helping, you know, having people come and do tele visits or especially where there’s not a lot of great internet service, you know, there are a lot of places that are just like really unfortunate and so so they’re going into those those places. There’s a word for that I forgot what it’s called. But anyway, um, holes in our in our infrastructure where they’re servicing people remotely, which is really interesting.
Greg Owens 14:49
That is interesting, because I was wondering about that because I read a one of the statistics around that was wrong, the schooling, that there’s still like, like 20% percent of Americans don’t have like, access to internet, something like that. Right? And in poor neighborhoods or rural rural areas, they just don’t have it. And so when they’re all tell them like, oh, we’re just gonna go to, you know, online schools, there’s not even possible for some of these for the some of these communities. So that’s interesting to hear.
Leigh Stringer 15:19
Yeah, we sent, you know, last spring at this point, you know, just the city was buying laptops, like, you know, and iPads and anything they could put together and send it out to, to students where they lived, but that necessarily mean that they had access, you know, and Wi Fi service. So,
Greg Owens 15:35
yeah,
Leigh Stringer 15:36
you know, where are the kids going to grocery stores?
Greg Owens 15:39
Where are they learning? Oh, they still crammed outside of Starbucks or something like that. I’m sitting on my sidewalk, right? Yeah. Yeah.
Leigh Stringer 15:47
And in fact, a lot of medicine telemedicine is kind of they’re finding out like, Where are you calling from like a car outside of Walmart, you know? Bye bye. So, I mean, not ideal, right? So I think that’s a country wide systemic problem we can work on later. The other thing, I think it’s really like front and center right now is our higher ed clients getting college students back, right and what
Greg Owens 16:11
it’s like, that’s a major focus. And I know that there’s I just read that, um, Arizona State, right? Like they’re, they had all 50,000 get tested, they’re like making and then they get tested like a week later. And they’re trying to bring students back and have this how this rod it’s an experiment, right? And I was like, Oh, this is gonna be fascinating to see how this experiment in a smaller community how it works out and if it can work because I know it’s also hasn’t worked in small some of the smaller communities to do things like that, including like the baseball. There has been some, you know, challenges within the baseball and testing everybody in keeping keeping COVID out to operations. All sports. And all sports. Yeah, yeah, there
Leigh Stringer 17:04
are so much many things I miss. I’m happy baseball’s semi back, you know,
Greg Owens 17:12
semi-back
Leigh Stringer 17:13
part of a season. I’ll take it, I’ll take it.
Right. Well, and it’s interesting. I mean, taking a step back and forgetting about the heart and scariness of this time, setting that aside. It is a it’s research, it’s live research happening in front of us around how we work, how we play, how we interact differently, right, as well as you know, our role and figuring out how to how to adjust COVID which is this biological thing, which manifests itself different in different populations and, and it seems to be you know, let’s try Hurd over here in Sweden, and let’s try these different methods of addressing and reducing the cases it’s, it’s really fascinating. If again, if you can also scary factor, and the whole of our academy and all these other things, you know, to the side, but I hope we learned something from it.
Greg Owens 18:05
Right and, and we most I hope we do too. I think there’ll be a lot of learning that comes out of the road he has right tremendous amount. And I remind my staff have this, you know, like we’re in this is history making time. This is the stuff that gets written into the history books, right? Like, who’s gonna remember 2019? And what even I can’t even think like what major events happened except for we did have some major fires, but this is California and California has major fires, like almost every other year or every year right now. And, and I always I personally keep thinking like, Okay, I’m making decisions today and putting it into a framework of like, What do I tell? You know, if a kid comes up to me and asked me, Hey, you lived through that 20 years ago, that unbelievable time in 2018 Right, this is now it’s 2014 or something? And how do I answer the questions of what I did? And how I behaved and and I find that’s a good framework to kind of see things and and what kind of so you’re right there. With all the opportunities and all the chat unbelievable challenges. What are you seeing what’s coming up within your industry that you’re seeing? Is there any trends that we should be watching and looking out for when it comes to buildings and health and buildings and that kind of thing?
Leigh Stringer 19:35
Well, there are a couple of things that are Yes, so many, so many where to start. I think the word trend always makes me a little nervous. Because things seem to be trending so quickly, you know, things seem to be happening so quickly. One of the things we actually were talking to some of our clients recently and like hey, you know, how can be helpful and and that kind of thing. Like stop writing reports and white papers, stop sending stuff. You know, it’s like drinking from a firehose, you know, we get the CDC we get these other things, especially a couple months ago, since like everybody was talking about, I’m an expert in this, and I have the solutions for you. And here’s the new next new cool tech happening. But, um, and I think one of the things that they found that was most useful to them, not I think I know, because they said, you know, let’s just Can we talk to our peers. So we ended up creating a consortium of people that were in the same similar same boat that they were facilities, managers, workplace, people, kind of nice mixers, little HR mixed in there. And this, this happens to be a bunch of academic medical centers, but you know, honestly, we could have done it with any industry and they were kind of going through some some really crazy times a few months ago, and so they it’s been awesome. It’s been really awesome. It’s kind of in a safe space for them to share among each other and they’ve agreed to share ideas. and things like that. And an out of that has come like what really might stick? As opposed to Yeah, that’d be cool. We should really try that. And some of the questions that they’re asking because I always think it’s really good to think in the minds of, you know, our clients, but that they’re asking, what should we spend money on now? matters that’s going to stick as opposed to, you know, sneeze guards everywhere. Or, you know, forget Open Office, let’s put them all in close now. And everyone’s a little capsules, you know, that kind of thing. Um, there are a lot of questions about work from home and how much of their staff can stay that way. You know, really, and, and who’s really business essential, and they can come in I thought this was actually really interesting, given that it’s academic, medical, you know, center because I’m like, isn’t everyone business’s job? True? It’s not true. It’s never. I didn’t
Greg Owens 21:53
make academic medical would that be like universe, UCSF in San Francisco? As I make medical, so it’s an actual medical facility,
Leigh Stringer 22:02
it’s going to be research lab, it’s on a creative space, that name a facility type, it’s like shoved in there, you know, I’m really dense pack, it’s really usually on pricey property that’s really, you know, ideally for clinical research space. But, you know, there be lots of other things in between. So it’s very hot, you know, space, you’re always trying to manage highest and best use at all times. And so, you know, the question, of course, is, well, gosh, if we can get rid of some of our office space, or rethink it in some ways, you know, can we create more COVID beds or space for, you know, our mission, our purpose around our patients, or in our research? So I think, you know, those are great questions. Lots of questions about, especially now, childcare, you know, they have a lot of people who have kids and or caregiving for adults or whatever, you know, parents, you know, are Yeah,
Greg Owens 22:53
yeah,
Leigh Stringer 22:55
it’s very real for a lot of us. What does that look like when we go back to work to We really go back to work because there’s some sort of a, you know, hybrid solution that allows people to individually kind of package their hours or schedule or shift or whatever that looks like, in order to appropriately do the job that they’re hired to do at the same time manage their crazy, this is happening in the background. So I think you know, m&r returned office returned office kind of funny, maybe not the best name anymore, but someday we will take office at some point and when our test scores and so of course, you know, like one of those drinking from the fire hose people and all this information coming out at us Yeah, really closely with our HR and, and they’re like, Look, you know, we just we put a policy in place it really is big guidelines, it really is be customized down to the person so many times and
Greg Owens 23:46
that’s interesting, customized down to the person makes a lot of sense, right? Because it’s each person like you said, they’re each person is juggling different risk factors, right. You know, if you’re taking care of elder parents at home You’re and you’re, you’re you’re going to want to probably limit your risks, right? Whereas if you might be, you might be single, and you’re like, No, I don’t mind meeting and seeing people and you know, maybe we’re social distance and running mass, but I don’t mind going into the office every day, and kind of stuff.
Leigh Stringer 24:18
You know, the other thing, as you’re talking, I was thinking about, you know, one of the really important trend themes that we’ve talked about for a long time is the importance of choice. And, you know, there’s all this research, you know, epidemiological looking over large populations that were large amounts of years and those people in professions with more choice or in their job, when there’s more choice, they’re less likely to be stressed, more productive, they’re less likely to get heart disease. So interesting. It’s actually a very healthy thing to do is to give people choice. And now in the world of COVID, one of the questions back to my little consortium group that they had for each other was, how do you choose you can work from home and I said, Well, interestingly, one of the candidates that we’ve been looking at is the Billings department, the call center folks, people who don’t have a choice about the hours they work, having choice about where they work makes a really big difference to them and their
families
Greg Owens 25:12
interesting
Leigh Stringer 25:13
oh, wow, that is really cool. And of course, it’s very easy to measure, you know, their productivity and things like that. So they’re an easy group to kind of pick off, if you will. But I thought that was fascinating. Just this kind of switch around choice and what choice really means, especially now and there’s so many things out of our control, the more we can put in our control, the healthier mindset is and, and their ability to juggle whatever’s coming next.
Greg Owens 25:39
Yeah, no, I like that a lot. And I just recently watched a TED talk from a psychologist that was it was wonderful on that subject. I mean, we will put it in the show notes, but it was it was all about that in that she for 10 years, she’s been trying to limit people’s stress because she was like stress is the killer. We need to like figure out ways to Have a stress free life. But then she, she dug into a deeper and found out that no stress is what makes us stronger. Right? Like, but it’s the choice of choosing. So maybe you have like a public, you know, if you’re if you’re not good at public speaking say, and you put your you say no, I’m going to do this, I’m going to get better. And you make that choice. It actually gives you all kinds of chemicals that make our healthy good chemicals. And that’s actually really good stress, right? Because you’ve chosen it so cheap that the whole point of choices is great. And it reminds me of Daniel Pink. I don’t know if you’ve read his book. But he talks about what motivates people and I loved his and I am really I tried to do this with my own people is like he his his came down to three things autonomy and so that’s where this now we’re right to your point, like we’re giving people even more autonomy. Where they maybe they didn’t before have a choice of where they work from but now you can give them that choice. Hey, do you want to work here, here or here? Right. And I think was the other two mastery. Autonomy mastery. What’s the third one?
Leigh Stringer 27:17
You’re gonna have to read his book drive to find out
Greg Owens 27:21
which is a great which is a great
Leigh Stringer 27:23
one. It’s actually really nice there Cliff Notes online for anyone. Yeah,
Greg Owens 27:26
maybe Katrina can look it up for me why we’re why we’re on here just like Daniel Pink three, three motivators because I got two of them and the third one disappeared, which stands out to me.
Leigh Stringer 27:39
Okay, purpose
Greg Owens 27:40
purpose. There it is.
Yeah, and he defines purpose as big P and little p, right. Like the little little p being like responsibility and you got to take care of your kids and those kind of things, which is, you know, that’s a big deal, but it’s not like you’re curing cancer. So some people wake up every Morning in there, they go to work and they’re like, I’m going to cure cancer or like Elon Musk, I’m going to go to Mars, right and be an interplanetary species. That’s a different. That’s a different motivator.
Leigh Stringer 28:13
It’s interesting, I’ve written a lot about health and well being about the planet. And the environment, which I both of which I care very much about. I feel like they’re very interrelated. But also you’re doing research early on just trying to figure out the market rate for these books and writing and like how books market and people care about health a lot more than they care about the planet.
So it’s really interesting, you know, as we think about,
about messaging about anything environmental, you know, bring it back to people bring it back to the impact of them, their families, your seven generations from now, whatever, but just something and right now, air quality is huge. It’s a big part of the conversation and any around it. office building. And engineering is actually a really big piece of that infiltration and humidity and controlling all these components of it. But it’s taken on a new sense of urgency again, asking about trends. I think that’s, that is a big one and also back to control. Showing that data to occupants. So you know, how many people are in the space, which is of course data, we’ve been able to check for a while there are a lot more tools and tech and less expensive on the market, you can use to see how many people should be in the space given those six foot rule and how many are which is really great. The other thing we’ve been trying these sensors called aware sensors, and if you familiar with them at all, handing them different places in our office, you can also get them from home. But it looks at via twos it looks at humidity, which is a big deal for COVID. It looks at Gosh, acoustics, lighting, whole bunch of things, a whole bunch of factors, but what’s great is now Have a any any one of our employees on our phone, we can look and see, oh, the large conference room Ooh, the co2 levels are really high or open the door in there, how many people are in there for your personal good. And it tells us also, you know, adjust our system you know work with our building manager and property manager to adjust the building system but getting back to you know, nothing’s going to be perfect systems are always funky people are always switching on the hot and cold right there’s always something going on. But But our awareness that there’s you know, more to it more to air quality more to a healthy building aidable building than we ever thought in terms of uses two vo C’s and the like, having that data in front of us and be able to look at it really powerful. So I’m seeing that as a trend for sure this opening up, you know, it’s not about being liable if anything, you know, I think you’re liable for not showing me that data. You know, like, be open Tell me what I got here.
Greg Owens 30:55
Yeah,
Leigh Stringer 30:56
let me think about it. You know, we have a high humidity day or two summer day that’s read out there, right? It’s like super hot. Well, you make an adjustment. I’ll be inside today or Oh, you know, whatever Same deal. I you know, there are a lot of people in that office. I’m not feeling so hot or I’m living with my older grandmother and whatever. I might choose not to go into the office and that’s okay. So anyway, I think it’s, it’s interesting how technology and the kind of, I don’t know just all the different things that we’re learning about. I can tell you so much about droplets now that I
months ago, right, like, oh, boy, here we go.