COVID-19: Standard Operating Procedure Improvement For Green Office Building Using Indoor Environmental Quality

World health Organization (WHO) acknowledge that the coronavirus airborne transmission could be potentially indoors with crowded and poorly ventilated rooms. Thus, COVID-19 guideline is expected to be part of the 'new norms' in workplace. However, regarding the COVID-19 Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) issued by Ministry of Health Malaysia, there is lack of concentration on Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) attributes even it has been proven in many research that the transmission of COVID-19 actively occurs indoor environment and IEQ could mitigate the virus transmission. Therefore, this study aims to discover sustainable COVID-19 framework for office building which not only resilient to COVID-19 threat, but also resilient towards sustainability. There are three objectives outlined in this study: 1) To identify IEQ attributes for office building, 2) To analyse the important IEQ attributes that relate to the existing COVID-19 management guideline for office building, and 3) To develop a sustainable COVID-19 framework for office building. A total of 93 questionnaires is distributed among employees at Menara Majlis Bandaraya Johor Bahru, Malaysia and analysed using Mean Analysis and Cross Tabulation to achieve the research objectives. Overall, result shows that EQ7 Air Change Effectiveness is the most important IEQ attributes that can be selected to improve COVID-19 SOP, while wearing face mask/face shield, frequent hand washing/hand sanitizer, practice personal hygiene and respiratory etiquette, avoid handshaking, practice social/physical distancing, avoid public spaces, gatherings and crowds, avoid contact with people who could be high-risk, avoid meeting in largescale size, relieve/stay home if feel unwell, avoid travelling who are in high-risk, and self-isolate who recently visited latest COVID-19 hotspots are the most important COVID-19 SOP for workplace. This study is significant for building manager or COVID-19 management in workplace to enhance their current SOP by integrating with IEQ to reduce COVID-19 spread in workplace.