Possible influences of covid-19 on infrastructure

Abstract

During the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, there was a sharp rise in the number of persons working from home (WFH), which eventually became the "new normal". The aim of this study was to fill the gap in detailed quantitative knowledge regarding space and travel savings as a result of WFH, albeit via a specific case study. The main objectives were to (i) Identify relevant issues via a systematic literature review; (ii) Compute the office space and fuel savings accrued when using hybrid working techniques; (iii) Explore employee preferences and attitudes towards WFH after categorizing the employees and (iv) Seek correlations between responses from the various employee responses. The findings show that, considering the reduced number of days of office space usage, 59% of office area can be saved from WFH. The employees' fuel savings were calculated for five separate groups of staff. The fuel savings ranged from 52% to 69% across the groups. The data indicated that employees are happy to work from home in general, and that there is potential to save office space. There is also some evidence that existing social differences across the workforce may have widened.