Practical issues at ASTRON/JIVE in corona time

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The corona pandemic has influence on many aspects in the way we organise our day to day tasks. We all have to deal with the situations, like working at home, other ways of communication, less or no ability to be on location etc. In these circumstances where very few people are present, some activities still need to be done on a regular base. Two examples of activities that colleagues of Facilities perform:

1. Taking care of plants at the office

All plants were taken out of the offices and placed in the central hall of building 2012. This enables us to water the plants effectively. Henk Vonk takes this task very seriously and does it with great pleasure. See picture.

2. Legionella control

The quality of drinking water in the Netherlands is very high, and according to regulations we are obliged to take measures to keep the drinking water in excellent condition and prevent Legionella. In normal conditions, when the building is fully occupied, we have to flush our water installations systematically. Since corona, most of work at home. This means that most parts of our water pipelines are used less frequently and additional attention must be paid to protecting our drinking water. On a weekly basis, water pipelines, showers, and several other water installation parts are flushed thoroughly, with a predetermined timespan. Each and every item of the flush activities needs to be documented. This is a time-consuming activity and is performed by our team of the Facilities department: Alex Benjamins, Henk Vonk, Martijn Tilma and Remco Wekema. This Legionella control procedure, as well as the flush report are checked periodically by an external company. When you see a team member flushing a water system, holding a stop watch, you now know they do it for our safety.