Covid-19 and the Air-conditioner connection (Part 1)

We learned in early 2020 that Covid-19 could spread in closed airconditioned spaces. See https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/7/20-0764_article So for the past many months we've seen aircons remaining switched off in grocery stores and supermarkets, making one wonder if it might have caused a drop overall in aircon sales! While most of us have been working from home since and never got to check out on the aircons back at the office, folks in IT and ITES/BPO industries know well that the design of our buildings and office spaces in Technology Parks that primarily depend on the aircon re-circulation for ventilation isn't amenable to radical change.

Part-1: How Covid-19 impacted IT infrastructure

The first national lockdown in India that was announced in March 2020 saw almost all companies being forced to down their shutters and remain at home. Sectors like IT serving overseas customers had to remain productive from home to survive. In the initial days of everyone-work-from-home, a lot was improvised using employees’ home routers, even mobile data. The hope at that time was the disruption would be short lived and these temporary measures would help tide over. However, expectations changed irreversibly with the triple lockdown clamped down in the state of Kerala in July 2020, following the opening up of road, rail and air transport that saw migrant workers, students studying outside and pilgrims and business travelers who got stranded on their tours, trying to scramble to get back home, many of them bringing in waves of infection into the state.

IT companies seeking higher reliability of customer communication and deliveries started rolling out reimbursement of their employee's data connectivity and braced themselves for a prolonged siege. Some of them even sponsored invertors or UPS to their employees to address power outages through the summer and monsoon months. Eventually the triple lockdown was lifted and it was announced that companies would be allowed to work with staggered attendance up to 33% with due precautions and social distancing etc. However, most of the companies decided not to risk reopening their offices. A potential spread of the infection among their employees was feared to directly imply downtime in customer projects and lost revenue. Meanwhile with the reopening of schools and the online classes, there was a mad scramble for computers and laptops - purchase, refurbishments, and rentals, to adapt to a fully WFH mode of work.

The extended by-the-people lockdown phenomenon has prolonged to such an extent, and projected to continue for many more months, that many companies that had a successful experiment with work-from-home productivity are seriously considering extending this as a preferred mode into the future. They are seeing massive savings on rentals, transportation, infrastructure costs and most importantly, the commute time of their employees. Others who have not been as successful have decided to retain their offices, if not grow in space in the near future. IT Parks in the state have witnessed an unprecedented drop in demand for additional space. A few may decide to retain just the prime spots in Technopark, Infopark or Cyberpark either aimed at overseas client visits in the future or for the sake of retaining the "IT Park" label for the pride factor of their workforce.

The global nature of the pandemic has not spared customers, not even in the developed world and global financial markets have started feeling the impact of the prolonged shrinking of large economies like the US, China and India. So in uncertain times like these it is prudent for Indian IT companies to review each of their operating costs to identify opportunities to optimize. The 3-months of waiver in rentals that has been proactively offered by some of the IT Parks has been a huge relief for many small and mid-sized companies struggling with the crisis. Although transportation costs dropped instantly throwing cab rental companies out of business overnight, other infrastructure costs have been continuing even though no one is in the office! In the attempt to reduce the overall operating cost per $ of revenue, nothing shall be spared - electricity, water, consumables and one of the most overlooked costs - the cost of air-conditioning, if it is indeed a separate cost!