Response to the pandemic
With the Covid 19 pandemic 4 months in to lockdown, the Board takes into account:
- Government policy appears to be to classify construction as an essential industry
- There is no differentiation within “construction”
- An advisory body- the Construction Leadership Council” – is issuing “guidance”
- Houlihan stopped work across all sites on 23/24.03.2020.
- After extensive consultation and risk assessment, we charted a safe return to work when clients reorganized their sites and for “essential” small works of Customer Care”.
- A task analysis conducted immediately determined that all tasks could be carried out with social distancing of 2.0m. While aware that this alone is insufficient defence against the virus, it is the essential first requirement of any continuing work under C19.
- The analysis included specialized work by contractors to us. All contractors were consulted and required to provide method statements and risk assessments to show how they could work safely. This is ongoing.
- An overarching method statement and risk assessment were produced for the whole Company, including travel, use of facilities on site/ hand washing/ sanitizing/ wearing masks and precautions in offices and on site for cleaning including shares equipment. As works were proposed to us, site specific measures were introduced with our own provision of facilities where the developers were not yet ready.
- As Government and CLC guidance develop and as clients bring in their own rules and control measures, we evaluate them and revise our procedures where necessary.
With so little scientific evidence specific to the behaviour and virulence of this virus, our risk assessment is, for all works, the highest point of medium risk: the imperative for the employees of the Company to come to work if not furloughed is that self employed have many hurdles to leap before any aid is available and the desperate hardship they face while no end to the pandemic is in sight is only weeks away.
The following documents set out the path we followed back to work safely as sites were opened by the clients we work for: