Delos
Delos founder and CEO Paul Scialla joins The Final Round to discuss how COVID-19 is forcing companies to readjust work spaces, the cost, and the significance of good practices moving forward for workers.
Video Transcript
MYLES UDLAND: We're joined now by Paul Scialla. He's the CEO and founder of Delos, a workplace and residential safety research company, which, Paul, kind of sounds like an amazing mix for this current moment. I guess just kind of walk us through, you know, what you guys are most focused on broadly and then obviously in this moment, as I think a lot of companies, probably companies that you've never worked with before, reaching out now saying, how am I going to get my workforce back into the office safely and use all this space that I'm paying for but no one is going to?
PAUL SCIALLA: Yeah, well, pleasure to be here with you today. Delos has been merging the health sciences with the building sciences for the better part of seven or eight years, looking at all the elements that surround us indoors and their impact on our health outcomes-- air quality, water quality, lighting, thermal, acoustics, really taking an evidence-based, scientific approach to that. Clearly, with what's just happened, this has come front and center.
MYLES UDLAND: So let's kind of walk through maybe, you know, a couple of things that are most urgent in this current moment as we try to get our workforce back. I mean, is it air quality? I've seen a lot of research around how, you know, respiratory particles travel through AC units and things like that. I know people in our office have often kind of speculated, like, are we all getting sick here at the same time? The answer is probably yes, probably because the air. What are some of the things that you guys are most closely looking at for the next, let's say, six months?
PAUL SCIALLA: So if you break this down, this pathogen concern, we really have three categories that need to be discussed and solution for. And the good thing is there are solutions for this. But basically, you've got an airborne viral load. You've got a surface-borne viral load, the things we touch, and then a behavior or behavioral-borne viral load, how we congregate. And those three categories are something that this company has been looking at for quite some time. Obviously looking at broader elements of health and wellness, but those are your three concerns.
ANDY SERWER: All right, so how do you mitigate that, Paul? And I mean, does this mean that the typical or the traditional work environment that we're used to is gone for good?
PAUL SCIALLA: No, it doesn't mean that. We've been looking at ultra-fine particles for the better part of two and a half or three years. When you look at COVID itself, there are effective filtration solutions. They're affordable. They're scalable. They're implementable. COVID's size is smaller than what traditional HEPA filtration will get you. But Delos, Delos Labs, our organization has been doing a lot of research and have put forth and do know about effective solutions here that the market is looking for.
This can cover a 700 square foot classroom all the way up to a million square foot building, really getting down to that ultra-fine particle, a micron size smaller than this pathogen. The good news is they are solutionable.
RICK NEWMAN: Hey, Paul, Rick Newman here. I've been talking with a lot of people about the elevator problem--
PAUL SCIALLA: Yeah.
RICK NEWMAN: --how you-- how people go back to work in cities where there are high rises, where to get to your job, you have to get on an elevator, and social distancing would leave just one or two people per elevator ride. How do you deal with that?
PAUL SCIALLA: Yeah, I mean, any enclosed space is obviously concerning. And you've got these distancing protocols and protocols-- and obviously stories out of China, early as people were coming back, where it took them, you know, almost 90 minutes to get up to their office on the 50th floor. With an elevator, you know, if you can implement even portable or rolling air solutions in the elevator itself, that's a great thing.
A lot of folks are looking at touchless technology. You know, surfaces are an issue. So you know, elevators are not an ideal space, as is any enclosed space. But there are configurable solutions to tackle that.
JEN ROGERS: So I keep hearing there are solutions. We can configure things differently. You can put something in the elevator. You told Andy, like, the workplace doesn't have to go away as we know it. You're talking to lots of different kinds of industries. Are there any industries that have come to you where you say, this-- we can't do this. I don't know, is it a movie theater? Is it the gym? Like, is there anything where you think, you guys, you just have to change your whole business model, this is not going to work?
PAUL SCIALLA: No, it's a good question. No, nothing is out of scope with regards to how to really address, again, those three categories. Clearly, when you look at air filtration, whether, again, it's a million square foot arena or a small office place, portable solutions, wall-mounted solutions, and induct solutions can get upwards of 99.97% efficiency at a micron size smaller than COVID, so that's encouraging.
With regards to behavior, clearly you need to look and think differently as it pertains to protocols in a classroom or a school, versus protocols in a stadium. In fact, our subsidiary, the International Well-Building Institute, has been aggregating all types of information on all these topics with a 500-member task force-- virologists, scientists, behavioral scientists-- putting forth best practices and industry protocols in the form of the health safety rating that is being issued for all types of buildings.
ANDY SERWER: Hey, Paul, but how much is this all going to cost us? How much does it costs society? How much does it cost a business? And it's going to make the cost of doing business in a city or in a skyscraper, you know, not feasible.
PAUL SCIALLA: Good. We get asked that question often. You know, I could tell you, roughly speaking, less than $1 a square foot, and you've got air solutions. If you actually put that through a financing mechanism, we were looking at a particular example for a school system, it could be less than $7 per student per year, OK? Over a period of time. That's a lunch, OK?
There's ways to finance this. There's ways to get this into institutions and portfolios where the cap-ex isn't required upfront. But you know, for less than $1 a foot on that cap-ex, you're really not talking about an insurmountable cost for air.
As far as the other components, behavioral components, the big issue there is communication, you know, an effective communication platform to employees as to what is good practice and best practice. But those are softer costs, not necessarily insurmountable, hard costs.
MYLES UDLAND: And so Paul, I mean, maybe-- look, everyone's office is going to look different. I've kind of been dreading, like, going back and-- you know, because we have an open office plan, right? We're not in cubicles. But what are they going to stick fiberglass in front of me like a hockey arena or something like that? I mean, it just doesn't-- talking to you, it doesn't sound like it has to be that drastic. It sounds like there are simpler ways that we can get people safely back into their work spaces.
PAUL SCIALLA: Look, it comes down to the science, OK? When you-- an organization like ours has been, again, merging the health and building science for quite some times, we can look at an organized thought plan here as to what categories we need to tackle. Air is so important.
You know, distancing protocols are fine. But you know, there's good enough research now that demonstrates that the ultra fine particles, you know, COVID-19, what have you, could live in the air for hours and travel upwards of 27 feet. It's not just about a six foot protocol. If you get the right filtration to constantly turn that air over, you're tackling a big part of the problem. And that doesn't have to be so drastic as to put, you know, fiberglass up every couple of feet to separate people.
MYLES UDLAND: All right, Paul Scialla, founder and CEO of Delos. A really important conversation, hopefully we can have you back as we get closer maybe to going back to work. Thanks for the time.
PAUL SCIALLA: Pleasure to be here.