This year has been far from the usual. Virtual meetings and working from home have become the norm for many people. However, when you’re constructing a building, there’s only so much that can be done remotely. That makes it even more important to make sure everyone understands safety protocols. Last week, Haselden participated in the COVID Safety Stand Down prompted by AGC of America to do just that.

What Does a Safety Stand Down Look Like During a Pandemic?

For people unfamiliar with a safety stand down, it’s when a construction site stops work to have a meeting discussing a specific safety topic. Under normal circumstances, the entire site would come together and the discussion would be led by the superintendent or site safety manager. But for last week’s COVID stand down, we did things a little differently:

Not everyone met at once. Many of our sites have dozens of workers, so to abide by the “no large gatherings” rule, we limited each meeting to groups of 10 people or less. We staggered meetings throughout the day to ensure the safety message reached everyone on site.
Don’t stand so close to me. Social distancing isn’t just important at the grocery store! Even in our small groups, we made sure to maintain the 6-foot social distancing rule.
Take it outside. Wherever possible, we held the stand down meetings outside in the fresh air.
First time topic. While common subjects for safety stand downs are things like fall protection and proper tool use, this one was all about keeping our jobsites safe during COVID-19.
Raise your hand if you’re present! Instead of the normal sign in sheet, we did a verbal sign in and had our subcontractors email us a list of participants. This avoided having everyone touch a pen and paper.

There were also things that we kept the same, like having Spanish translation available onsite wherever needed.

**What Exactly ARE Jobsites Doing to Stay Safe?**

While construction is definitely an industry that requires cooperation and collaboration, it is inherently one that usually places workers several feet apart from each other. Building on this, we began by implementing the AGC standards for a safe construction site during COVID, including general suggestions such as ensuring 6-foot social distancing, providing hand sanitizer, and staggering breaks to discourage group gatherings. This was a good start, but we determined several additional strategies we could implement to increase COVID safety on our projects:

Start with a clean slate. Our safety team worked with Haselden’s sister company—HRS Disaster Restoration—on full sanitations of every project site at the onset of the outbreak.
Keep it clean. Each project has assigned sanitation teams which clean areas like the trailers, portalets, break areas, and even some scaffolding rails before, during, and after shifts. Shared construction equipment is disinfected after each use.
One way up/One way down: On projects with more than one staircase, each staircase is designated (and posted) as either ascending or descending. This keeps traffic flowing in one direction and enables greater social distancing as people don’t have to pass each other on the stairs.
Elevator restrictions. Elevators are close quarters, so we’ve restricted the use of our site elevators for material transport and two people to move the materials.
Don’t touch your face! Providing face sleeves to all of our workers reminds people not to touch their face throughout the day and also provides protection from droplets.
Educational posters. We created specialty COVID education posters that are displayed at all jobsites.

Why Did We Hold a Stand Down Now?

Making sure people stay safe is more important than ever. To do that, we wanted to reiterate the information we’d been sharing with our team members over the past month. When AGC of America announced the national stand down, we knew it was something Haselden would take part in.

“The stand down reinforced our COVID jobsite protocols and helped ensure everyone on the project understands the guidelines and procedures we’ve put in place,” said Travis Weber, Haselden’s director of environmental health and safety. “It was also an opportunity to reassure the public and city officials that the construction industry is doing our part to protect our workforce and the public from the spread of COVID-19.”