ACPA Concrete Pavement Progress Quarter 3 2020

www.acpa.org Quarter 3, 2020 11 Paving in the Age of Social Distancing Contractors Overcome the Challenges of a Pandemic By Sheryl S. Jackson AN ESSENTIAL SKILL OF ANY CONCRETE PAVING CONTRACTOR is the ability to change plans to address unforeseen challenges at a jobsite. Beginning in the early part of this year, the entire industry’s ability to pivot at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic created challenges never before experienced. Unlike natural emergencies such as earthquakes or hurricanes, COVID-19 affected all regions of the country—some more seriously than others. The first change that most contractors had to make was not at the jobsite, but at the office. “We put plans into place quickly to enable employees to work from home if it was easy for them to do so,” says Craig Hughes, vice president of field operations for Cedar Valley Corporation. Moving employees from the office to home did mean purchasing additional laptops and tablets. There were some employees who, due to the nature of their work or to home situations, did need to come to the office, he says. “We don’t sit close to each other in our office, so social distancing wasn’t an issue, but we did provide hand sanitizer for each office space, at the copy machine, and at all stairwells.” Although 20% of the Koss Construction office-based staff opted to work remotely, it was simple to social distance in the office for those who chose to work onsite. “Our office is fairly large and most employees have their own office, so employees who came into the office felt safe,” says David Howard, chief executive officer of Koss Construction. “We do have a few clerical employees in cubicles, but we were able to create space between them.” Because the office does not have public foot traffic or frequent visitors, the door was always locked, and FedEx and UPS drivers had a basket outside the door to place their packages to minimize contact with others. Milestone Contractor’s experience in Indiana had an added twist—the company relocated the Indianapolis office in which 80 to 100 employees work. “The plans tomove were already in place but we had to create a sched- ule for packing the existing office and unpacking in the new office based on headcount to ensure social distancing,” explains Amy L. Wright, vice president of human resources for the company. “We also had to schedule time to sanitize the new office after the movers left.” Although contractors were able to keep office staff on the job—either working remotely or working in offices with fewer people—once construc- tion season arrived, there were some challenges faced with members of field crews. Cedar Valley started their construction short-handed because many of their employees return to their families in Texas for the winter season, says Steve Jackson, president and chief executive officer. “Because Iowa and Nebraska focused on isolation for people traveling from other states, we did require our employees returning from Texas or other states to self- quarantine for 14 days before they could begin working,” he says. Because the company knew the employees were returning to work, there was no attempt to hire temporary replacements nor to delay the start of any jobs, he says. “We just made do with those whomwe had in place, which meant everyone worked harder in those first few weeks.” In most areas of the country, certain types of construction were deemed essential and continued as planned, however, some projects in and around Buffalo, New York were delayed until later in the year. “These were small projects that have already been awarded but were deemed non-essential by the owner,” explains Frank D. Surianello, P.E., president of Surianello General Concrete Contractors. “Other projects that were larger, multi-year, multi-phase projects, such as the reconstruction of the highway crossing between the U.S. and Canada, were accelerated due to the decrease in traffic on major highways.” Photo courtesy of Sarah Sanders, Pavement Engineer for the CO/WY Chapter of ACPA. continues on page 12 »