Hello Chief Delphi! As we start to approach this coming school year, it seems more and more teams are trying to figure out how to safely open their shop doors. This is a thread to allowed team to share their current safety plan regarding Covid-19.
Please make sure to include the region of the world you are from in your post. Regional differences may have effect on the level of precautions one takes.
We are a community team (not a school-based team) in North Carolina.
Relative to our facility, we took actions to increase the airflow by installing additional fans at the doors and keeping the doors open during meetings. Since the part of the building that we are in is basically un-occupied, we do not need to worry about other aspects of shared airflow with other occupied areas of the building.
Work that can be done online is being done online. Face to face meetings are reserved for tasks that require the use of the robot or other physical aspects of the build space. We are allowing the scouting team to have face to face meetings since they need to access the server and other programming resources at the meeting space.
The guidelines that we are asking the students to follow are as follows:
Waiver signed by parents before 1st meeting
Health Check: Q&A and Temp Scan when they enter
No more than 7 students / 10 people total in meeting space
Wear a mask (mandatory) while in meeting space
Social distance when possible (6’ apart)
Minimize number of people working in small spaces (i.e. around robot)
Observe max occupancy at tables / work areas
Clean work surfaces at end of meeting
Clean hand tools before returning to toolbox
Wash hands with soap and water
Bring their own snacks / drinks (no club snacks or drinks available)
The Q&A in item #2 is about places you have travelled, exposure to people who have tested positive, etc. One of our big challenges early on was how to handle situations where someone was potentially exposed. In general, students have volunteered to stay away while they await the outcome of testing of themselves or people that they have been exposed to that are being tested. How to handle these situations should be carefully thought through at the outset. They have come up more often that I would have predicted.
We review these guidelines periodically. When the guidance from the state is updated, we review these guidelines to see if there are items that we need to change.
We are currently evaluating the use of face shields in lieu of safety glasses. We have observed that when safety glasses get fogged up, people tend to remove their facemask to stop the fogging. We are hoping that face shields will not fog as easily.