World Back to Work

In the spring of 2020 a very large number of organisations discovered simultaneously that they had no idea how to reopen. World Back to Work was built to answer that, and it was built fast.

The core product was Rapid Infection Response: when someone tested positive or presented likely symptoms, we ran the managed quarantine, the contact tracing, the notification of exposed individuals without disclosing the infected person’s identity, the recleaning determination, and the retesting before return.

The part of that description doing the most work is a line from our own programme documentation — we were there to ask “the questions School administrators would be potentially uncomfortable asking.” That was the actual product. Not the software. An employer or a dean could not credibly interrogate their own people about where they had been and with whom, and they could not not do it either. A neutral third party could.

Around that sat a 24/7 inbound call centre, US-staffed, running a branching script with rules-based dispositions — connect to HR, quarantine, get a test, speak to a doctor, or some combination — with defined escalation and weekly data integration. Outbound tracing calls ran 8am to 8pm local, seven days a week. Plus testing and on-site test-centre staffing, deep cleaning, and an EPA-registered antimicrobial surface treatment applied electrostatically.

Clients and partners ran from Intel and Tootsie Roll Industries to Jerry Bruckheimer Films (for a production shoot), Dutch Bros, Magnaflow, El Camino College, Mt. SAC, Oklahoma City University Law School, the Arden Theater, and event work reaching AEG Goldenvoice. We also ran white-label through EnSafe, which carried the service into Ferguson, Rolls Royce and Brother International.

What I took from it: an operation assembled in weeks under genuine uncertainty is a different discipline from an operation designed. You cannot specify it in advance; you build the smallest working version, put real volume through it on Monday, and let the failures tell you what to build next. That is now how we scope the first two weeks of almost every engagement.