Employees Are Getting Sick

It was a brand new, $440M building in Florida and after many years of discussion, design and construction, the building owner’s staff were starting to move into the building.  Within days entire departments of people were calling in sick with headaches, fever, respiratory issues – it was the early days of the famous phrase “sick building syndrome”.  The public owner was upset and didn’t know what to do – the architect and engineers were blaming the contractor, the contractor blaming the designers and the bonding company was stepping in – which slows everything down.  Lawyers all around and a building not completed and the sections that were finished were vacated.  Immediate testing indicated mold in the building – sick building syndrome confirmed – but who is to blame and how do we fix it?  Meanwhile, 700+ employees of a courthouse had limited places to work.

 

The owner of the building decided to make a definitive move and hired us to review and assess the real cause of the issue and how to correct it.  All parties agreed to participate in the process and we arrived on site and began the analysis and interviews.  The interviews were intended to accomplish several goals; however, it was required to solicit everyone’s perspective.  Within three weeks, we had identified the problem, the cause, the redesigned solution and all the parties had agreed to a cost-sharing program to correct the problem.  Three months later, test results revealed that the environment had been cleaned up and it was safe for occupancy.