TZL 1367 (web)

11

O P I N I O N

Remote work lessons learned

Firms are discovering new ways of operating that will allow them to be more effective and efficient throughout the rest of the pandemic and after.

L ike many others in the AEC industry, the sudden and drastic changes in society as a result of COVID-19 significantly affected our firm’s operations. As an essential business serving utilities, municipalities, manufacturers, and others also considered essential, we had to quickly arrange for the majority of our staff to become remote workers. We faced a variety of challenges for which we had to find solutions, and as a result have many “lessons learned” to share. The journey of figuring out how to continue to work productively during this time has been arduous, but through it we have discovered new ways of operating that will allow our firm to be effective and efficient throughout the rest of the pandemic and after.

Sandi Matgouranis

When this started, we were a firm that was not yet set up to accommodate a majority of staff working remotely. We had technology that allowed those out in the field or who needed to work from home in a one-off instance to do so, but the experience was more disjointed than we would have liked. Coincidentally, we had been working on improving this, and in early March we had started giving laptops to all technical staff to replace their desktops. With the arrival of COVID-19, that timeline was accelerated to warp speed. We went from having a handful of staff working remotely at any one time to approximately 60 percent

working remotely full-time. Our IT manager had the herculean task of purchasing and setting up dozens of laptops in just a couple of weeks. Now that we’re through it, we expect that as we go forward, we will primarily utilize transportable technologies as the main work tools for all staff, and will need to keep abreast of which new ones make sense to invest in. Also, while this had already been in the works for technical staff, the pandemic has caused us to realize these tools are useful for administration, too.

See SANDI MATGOURANIS, page 12

THE ZWEIG LETTER NOVEMBER 9, 2020, ISSUE 1367

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