Health measures gain importance, may push operational expenses up by 20% for businesses

Commercial business parks are reportedly chalking out plans to ensure that health and safety measures are in place once operations resume post the coronavirus-led lockdown.

These endeavours may however hike operational expenditure (opex) as businesses look to work out long term social distancing, sanitisation, detection and prevention measures and commute routes, said a report by The Economic Times.

Experts said as per the report that additional health and safety requirements of employees amid the COVID-19 pandemic will push up opex by at least 20 percent.

Vinod Rohira, MD & CEO, Mindspace Business Parks noted that requirements such as security protocols, thermal scanners, and deep sanitisation could spike common area maintenance cost (CAM) costs by 20-25 percent.

Apart from increased hygiene measures, layout of cafeterias and break out zones would have to be redone to prevent close and large gatherings. New areas and better technology would also be required to better track people, it added. All this would add to costs.

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Knight Frank India CMD Shishir Baijal added that with safety of paramount importance and both landlords and tenants need to share the burden, as the property and facility management costs would rise.

Currently, these measures are being undertaken by the business parks themselves, but for the long term as business scale up operation in phases, the costs would have to be distributed tenants and clients, it noted.