Construction industry and COVID-19
Human touch
Exactly two weeks ago I attended a large event for built environment professionals. Futurebuild 2020 attracted nearly 30,000 influencers and shapers, who all gathered under ExCeL’s roof, which is an exhibition venue in East London. There was a strict no handshake policy, but I remember not everyone taking the warning seriously.
Offering someone the traditional welcoming gesture is deeply rooted into our culture, and we simply do it subconsciously. It takes some time to change people’s behaviour. However humans are capable of adapting to new situations and we now notice the new trend of “elbowing”.
Not this kind of elbowing! We mean a friendly elbow bump, like the one below:
Spread of the virus
Following the news over the past two weeks shows how quickly the virus has spread across Europe and other parts of the world. On 4th March the British Government reported a total of 85 cases in the UK. The country was encouraged to operate business as usual while COVID-19 began claiming first lives of British citizens the next day. This Wikipedia page describes the pandemic in more detail. Today, as of 17th March, Public Health England reports a total of 1,543 cases and 55 deaths in the UK due to the coronavirus.
18 times increase in the number of cases over a 2-week period in the UK.
Number of construction workers
Statista estimates there are 2.7 million people employed in the British construction industry. 14% work in an office environment, which means they can currently work safely from home. However we are still left with over 2.3 million people being required on building sites, whose specialism is one of the trades listed below.
Majority of construction workers are sole traders and we now know that insurance companies do not make it easy to make claims against COVID-19. If your health is affected by the pandemic, and you are unable to work, and you are self employed, you must carefully read your insurance policy and check if you are covered against a ‘notifiable disease’ or pandemic. You may be able to make a claim on non-coronavirus basis if you are unable to work due to another reason though. It all depends on your policy’s terms and conditions.
Building sites shut downs
People in construction sites share tools, touch materials and quite often do not have a luxury of washing hands after each of those tasks. They naturally touch their faces during work. People working at heights might drip sweat onto those below. Men take a lot of pride from being part of the site team and enjoy a good handshake. All of these elements create a very good environment for the coronavirus to spread, once one of the contractors brings it into a building.
The construction industry will experience some shortages of staff as people start feeling unwell and decide to self-isolate for 14 days. Individual building sites may decide to completely shut down for the near future to help fighting the pandemic more effectively. The New York City is already moving its strategy towards this.
Design Studios are in a safer position
There are still many projects in a design stage, which does allow architects, engineers and project managers to keep working. Connecting to your company server to access all files is possible by using VPN technology. If you are unsure how to configure this, speak with your IT department and ensure you test the connection before taking laptop home. Having access to the internet from your home means you can do majority of your work from a safe self-isolated environment. Rather than travelling to a design team meeting, ask the organiser to send you a link for dialing in. Many organisations use video conferencing solutions such as Zoom, GoToMeeting or Microsoft Teams.
I will write a dedicated article on working from home, which may require a little getting used to by many people in the build environment. Stay tuned.
Projects pipeline is looking healthy
As we can imagine, the pandemic will not last forever, and if we all act responsibly as a society, we will stop coronavirus from spreading. The sooner we take action, the sooner we will come back to business as usual.
Browsing the government’s Contract Finder reveals nearly 600 tender opportunities in the construction sector. On top of that, there are private develpers investing in schemes ranging from transportation to large residential towers.
Some exciting projects to observe in 2020 include:
Positive Note
The construction industry has always been very high risk. Speed of project delivery depends on number of contractors available to work, weather conditions, economical climate and capabilities of the management team. There are always so many factors that can delay a scheme. The outbreak of COVID-19 will definitely have an impact on the build environment but all well-thought-out projects have contingency plans allowing for certain things to prove troublesome. Now, when we are starting to act more responsibly, limiting our physical contact with other individuals, working from home and self-isolating we should see the number of new coronavirus cases reducing.
Stay healthy, act responsibly and be patient. We’ll come out from this well soon.
