Every day brings new information, insight, and challenges amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Uncertainty about the future, however, is creating the largest hurdle for most of us—and this is equally true for businesses within our industry. But we can all do our part to quell the spread of this new virus by taking responsible action as organizations and individuals. 

As your trusted partner, we at Builders Mutual want to provide job-site-specific guidelines and resources to help you navigate this national crisis. We recognize there are times when cash flow can be challenging and stopping work altogether may not be a viable option. So, let’s educate ourselves and work together as an industry in the efforts to defeat this outbreak.

Know the symptoms of COVID-19

• If you or a family member are experiencing fever, dry cough, body aches, and shortness of breath, contact your health care provider. Here are some informative links to help you learn more:
  • What are coronaviruses and COVID-19?
  • How COVID-19 spreads
  • People at risk for serious illness from COVID-19
  • Symptoms of the virus

Make everyone’s health the priority

General contractors need to send a clear message that employee and subcontractor health is their top concern. This is a time to create new habits—and these must start from the top. We encourage you to implement as many of these suggestions as possible:

1. Wash and sanitize all tools, vehicles (handles and latches both inside and outside), ladders, and other equipment. If people put their hands on it every day, it needs to be cleaned and sanitized.
2. Wash and sanitize all personal protection equipment (PPE).
3. Create an easily accessible sanitization station on every job-site
4. Provide a sanitization station adjacent to the permit/job box. Or consider sharing electronic versions of common prints from the job box to eliminate users always touching paper copies.
5. Keep subcontractors and potential visitors safe and healthy by taking the time to clean doorknobs and other components of existing structures and those under construction.
6. Suggest that employees bring lunch from home to avoid visiting restaurants on their lunch break.
7. Provide cases of individual water bottles instead of using a shared community water cooler.
8. Consider sick pay, advance pay, and partial pay for anyone who can’t work because of COVID-19. The federal government is providing small businesses with access to funds in an effort to sustain this integral segment of our economy. Stay up to date here.
9. Find creative ways to schedule work that keeps 10 or fewer people on the job-site at a time.

The CDC has printable posters and information sheets available to hand out and post on job-sites. Use this link to download printables (available in English and Spanish) about symptoms, minimizing the spread of the virus, and what to do when you’re feeling sick.

Stay up to date with these additional COVID-19 resources.

• AGC site
• CDC COVID-19 site
• Preparing workplaces for COVID-19

As always, stay safe!  We are all in this together.