On Wed, Apr 19, 2006 at 11:57:01AM +0100, Michael.Dillon@btradianz.com wrote:
That recirculated air is likely to be shared with the rest of the buildings inhabitants, not just the engineers.
I'd say it's 50/50 from the buildings I've worked in. The Commonwealth Building in Portland Oregon actually put the air handler in the wiring closet. http://www.emporis.com/en/wm/bu/?id=122627 I know this because when it would start up at 0600, it would brown out the electrical power. Our equipment was on a UPS that detected this and bridged the gap - but customer equipment on another floor wasn't. I was standing next to it, fancy borrowed ethernet protocol analyzer attached to the customer line...at 0600 when they described the problem would manifest, when the air handler startup noises succeeded in scaring the living daylights out of me. It didn't help that the UPS was beeping at the same time and the protocol analyzer was registering a flood of collisions and generally spitting out red text and flashy lights. As I remember the ducting, it ran from plenum, to air handler, back to our plenum (there was no false roof in the wiring closet, it was just sort of open where the neighboring office walls ended). It would be good to know for certain. And the point is kind of moot if your company is large enough that they've centralized your engineering groups into a single building (as has also been the case at some places I've worked). We had things much worse than that in the Commonwealth building however...
On the other hand, engineers tend to have already perfected the art of working remotely. Continuity planning people are likely to notice that skilled technical people are essential to smooth operations and will kick them out of the office before anyone gets sick.
If I ever had one of those watching over me, he never said "You fool! You look like you have flu symptoms! Go home!" I have on rare occaision had the converse said due to some impending deadline... I suspect by the time it's an epidemic it's probably too late. -- David W. Hankins "If you don't do it right the first time, Software Engineer you'll just have to do it again." Internet Systems Consortium, Inc. -- Jack T. Hankins