Episode 2: Jobsite Safety and Technology During the Coronavirus Pandemic – What You Need to Know

Coronavirus has given jobsite safety a new meaning — and new ways to use technology data to maintain safety. Amid the pandemic, the best systems create transparency allowing executives, contractors and subs to work together to create safer workplaces. Join us as we bring back Brad Tabone with HammerTech to explore what he's seeing in the industry amongst this pandemic.

Brian Copta:

In the last several months, the world has changed in ways most of us couldn't have imagined. The ongoing pandemic has sent the economy reeling into recession and possible depression, and many construction firms are struggling to find their footing in this new, fast changing environment. The fallout is already evident. The AGC reports that 40% of construction firms have laid off employees, while 50% have halted projects and 74% are seeking government relief. At the center of this havoc is construction safety, and not surprisingly, it's taken on a new meaning in a post-pandemic world. Along with keeping workers safe from injuries, construction leaders must now think about how to keep workers safe from virus transmission, while still meeting stringent timelines and maintaining razor-thin margins. In other words, companies need industry leading job site safety and technology data more than ever. And companies that are employing these systems are not only ensuring workers safety, they're also gaining an edge over their competition. Understanding just how companies are using job site safety and data technology to gain that edge will be our topic for this episode of the Safe and Sound podcast series, where we elevate the conversation around construction safety.

I'm your host, Brian Copta, and I'm pleased to be joined today by a guest who has been on the front lines of construction companies as they combat coronavirus. Brad Tabone is co-founder and EVP North America for HammerTech and entrepreneur with a passion for business improvement through the use of technology and process engineering. Brad has 10 years experience working within the financial services industry, business improvement, business intelligence, operations transformation, and project management. Brad also has six years experience working as a partner in the IT consultancy company First Time Solutions, helping small to medium businesses across industries with business improvement through technology.

Hi, Brad. First off, I want to ask how you and your family are doing through all of this.

Brad Tabone:

Hey, Brian. Personally, I'm doing great. I guess I count myself lucky each day that I get up. My family back in Australia, safe and sound, my wife and I in here and friends are safe and sound and kind of lucky that HammerTech is able to play a critical role during these COVID times, which means our staff are also secure in their jobs and safe working at home. I've even bought an elliptical to continue my exercise regime during all this craziness. Yeah, look, personally I'm doing great. Obviously, a lot of people suffering, and it's not their fault. But personally grateful that I'm in the position that I'm in.

Brian Copta:

Well, I'm glad to hear that. So, Brad, as I mentioned at the start of the show, the pandemic has changed everything, and that includes our podcast series. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about how we've changed the series in light of COVID-19?

Brad Tabone:

Yeah. The Safe and Sound premise behind the podcast is still flow through the episodes. What we're doing now is, I guess, pivoting the podcast to focus on the now and the important things in our peripheral. Not that the previous things were non-important, but right now we're in the middle of this crisis and I guess the information flow through to people, anything that we can help them with at the moment through this episode, which is based on, obviously, technology and how GCs are using technology and analytics more broadly to assist in their response to COVID. Within the next episode, I'm going to be getting along some SMEs from the frontline of world-renowned GCs, and talk about what's going on at the project level at the moment, outside of HammerTech, what processes are being put in place, what technology's being put in place. And then the last episode, episode four, inviting along some safety consultants and professionals to really take a look at what the world will look like moving forward and looking at operational and management, support and how businesses have to structure themselves. So there's a technology arm, but there's also the people arm. So we're going to try and focus on technology, then on the site-specific, and then take it up a level at the company level and really just provide hopefully some great insights, some good guests on the show.

Brian Copta:

That sounds great.

Brad Tabone:

Yeah, looking forward to it.

Brian Copta:

Me too. So specific to your company, what extra steps has HammerTech taken to ensure worker safety during this time?

Brad Tabone:

Yeah, so when COVID hit... We've been tracking it since January, like probably everyone else. Being a safety product, we take a extra focus on anything relating to job safety. And we took a step back for about four to six weeks as we realized this is not just another event. And we want to ensure that we gave it the respect and thought that it kind of needed for a response. As we kind of learned more about the virus, I mean, it's changed every single day. We're learning more and more about it and the measures that the CDC and other parts of the world were putting in place. We started to engage with our clients around the globe to really strategize about what in our system today could be utilized, what our clients were already utilizing in terms of ideas that they've come up with that we could share, and then what new functionality needed to either be built outright or on top of the existing functionality to assist them.

Some key items that will probably be a theme of today is extending our existing online orientation functionality to enable touchless orientations. Orientations are now a critical part for our companies, and also prospective clients that we've been speaking to over the last four to six weeks around social distancing on site. So it's no longer around just the efficiency and the learning side of things. It's also around the ability to still kind of move people through their orientation phase, given the same, if not better outcomes, but do it in a way where they're not all jam-packed into a room and meeting CDC guidelines.

Touchless worker sign-on and checklists that the CDC over here requires individuals to answer questions every day. So tying that checklist into our existing sign-on process, but making it touchless was something else. And then looking at contact tracing. We've got the ability of personnel data in the system, location data in the system, check-in, check-out data, so we can look at contract tracing. And then just look at the other processes in the system like meetings and permits and look at how we can just make those all touchless really is about how do you make something touchless, and then how do you arm the GCs with functionality to replace their manual processes or processes that have been hampered now by COVID where there's new requirements. And this is the new norm.

Brian Copta:

Well, speaking specifically to the on the job aspect of construction sites, there's a short story that I wanted to share with you that I think really illustrates the bind that construction firms find themselves in, and I really wanted to get your feedback on it. So this is from a construction pro in Florida.

I'm a salaried superintendent building large apartment complexes. I have about 100 workers every day from all over the state, all working in the same building, going from room to room. Yesterday I found the sprinkler guy sick as a dog. He visited every room in the building. If he coughed or sneezed in just a few rooms, and the virus we know lingers in the air for four hours and stays on surfaces far longer, he just pretty much infected every single person on the job. Our corporate offices and regional offices with salaried workers closed down so they can remain safe, yet we are required to show up and work in a giant germ-filled Petri dish of a building. I have three months of vacation saved up, but I can't use it because the project is on a strict timeline. This is a giant disaster waiting to happen. It is not if, but when. So how do us construction guys stay safe? I'm scared as hell going to work every day, but I do not get an option unless I just quit. And I cannot do that.

So if this were your super, what would you say to him?

Brad Tabone:

First of all, I think that all of us that are able to complete our jobs from a secure, safe location of our home really need to take that step back if we haven't and play that superintendent's story back in our mind and show, I guess, first of all, the gratitude and empathy for those that cannot work safely from home and therefore find themselves in a quagmire. Construction workers, healthcare workers, delivery, shopping people, Amazon, and even restaurants are finding themselves in these kind of quagmire situations.

Personally, I wouldn't want to comment or weigh in on a matter that is kind of not my responsibility or area of expertise. I think there's a lot of noise out there in terms of what is considered essential, what isn't, and then therefore the flow and effects and impacts of those decisions. It's not to fence it, but I don't like kind of adding noise to that situation which I don't have any influence or expertise on. But that story's one that could turn, right, and one that I've kind of had conversations with numerous people through clients that we have today, friends that work in the industry or prospective clients.

I can give a perspective, though, as a co-founder of HammerTech and some of the generally cares about the safety of workers, which I would hope would be the management teams that the superintendent, if you were answering this superintendent, you'd of think, hopefully, along the same lines as me. I guess where construction has been deemed an essential service and continues to be moving forward, I'll be making sure that the superintendent knows that we are, as a management team, but also HammerTech, doing everything that we can to mitigate the risk of him continuing work, or her, on site and showed them that, I guess, safety truly is our first priority. Safety is one of those things that companies previously have said is always the number one. But when the tide goes out, like it has with COVID, you really find those companies that have made that investment, et cetera.

So, first of all, I think it would be putting the line in the sand and saying that we are going to look after you. I would ensure that the superintendent and the team and every worker on site has all the PPE they require to do the job safely, and as per guidelines, otherwise do the right thing and shut down the site until I do, which takes, I guess, that risk factor out, which I know that a lot of people are finding themselves in the bind on. I would ensure that we invested in the critical technology, the mandatory stuff. These infrared cameras, you can go out and spend $200 and go out and spend $800 and get yourself an infrared camera that reduces the distance that you have to be near people to test their temperature on site, et cetera. So there's a number of things like that. And looking to O2 solutions.

I would ensure that paper is a thing of the past. That certainly should be a thing of the past. It has a huge transfer risk. The virus can live on paper for up to two days. That's just an easy, quick thing. Get that out of the way. I'd ensure that all surfaces have a cleaning... There's a cleaning schedule that is mandated and tracked electronically so we can actually govern that. And then I'd just put in all of those other processes that I've talked about previously with HammerTech that are available, not just with HammerTech, but there are other solutions. Move your orientations online, reduce social, distancing. Any processes that you can, move it online.

I think the key here is communication and providing transparency. So that superintendent and a lot of people that I've spoken to just haven't had the transparency and the communication. I think that's due to a number of companies scrambling at the moment because the tide has gone out. They're left dry in terms of their commitment and investment, both effort-wise and money-wise in investing in safety. And so even if that is where you are at, it's just communicating that clearly and showing your empathy and then doing something about it. I think that's really what we can... Because we're going to have these essential services. People are going to find themselves in a situation that's... It's horrible. I count myself lucky that I'm not in one of those, but where they are and where the industry is backing, I guess, sites being open and you find yourself in that situation, it's about just transparency and ensuring people are putting the right risk items in place. Part is empathetic, but then on the other side, this is what I'm hoping that GCs are going to start doing, using this as a catalyst.

Brian Copta:

Well, and I know you've been on the front lines at numerous of companies helping enhance safety. Tell us what you're seeing out there.

Brad Tabone:

Yeah. Truthfully, I'd say the biggest change that I've noticed, especially over the last three to four weeks as, I wouldn't like to use the word normalized, but I'll just say as people start wrapping their heads around this and companies start putting in processes and we start working through what the new world looks like, the last three or four weeks the biggest thing that I've seen is that safety now has the limelight and the respect that it should have been having since day one. GCs that took safety seriously... I think we can be honest that, like I said before, a lot of GCs said they took it seriously, but the real ones are getting found out now. So the ones that I saw that made the investment, they were able to simply just reconfigure, add some additional solutions, and provide a really robust risk mitigation strategy to their job sites.

The other ones are scrambling for solutions. The good thing is that, personally, we're seeing a massive uptake in people searching for products and involving us in that search. It's positive to see that at least it's been a catalyst that will be a change, hopefully, and as a new norm moving forward. I'm seeing a huge opportunity in terms of that safety infrastructure and attention to workers on site, not just technology, but the safety information and processes.

We had a round table yesterday, and we're now talking about covering our faces with material, for instance. And while they're doing that training, they're also talking about when you should be using an N95 or P100 masks and traditional hazards onsite that maybe haven't been taken seriously before. So if you take COVID seriously, take silicone seriously as well.

Worker facilities are finally being looked at. I believe that if you compare worker facilities here in the US compared to the EU or Australia, I would say the worker facilities have a long way to come here. And COVID, due to the transfer risk, things that are portable, looking at more fixed solutions, looking at cleaning schedules, looking at providing additional facilities, which is great.

Worker tracking is something that I think is a new norm, both from a productivity point of view, but also from a safety point of view and contact tracing point of view. So whether that's a simple solution, like just adding the locations against the personnel in a meeting, or IOT. And lastly, probably discussions around offsite manufacturing and modules back. So reducing the number of people on the actual job site and moving them offsite is obviously something that people are doing and investing in that. The probably main kind of, I would say, areas that I'm seeing come through, some are around kind of catching up, some are around handling the existing problem that we've got, and some are looking at the future.

Brian Copta:

You mentioned that certain companies being exposed when the tide goes out. What would you say sets them apart from the best companies and how are the best companies, what are they doing differently at this time?

Brad Tabone:

Yeah, I would say that companies that have made that effort and investment into digitalizing processes, collecting data, removing paper from site, utilizing those data points to make decisions, both lead metrics and kind of midstream metrics rather than lag. So the companies that have kind of already put solutions in place to, A, make the job sites more efficient and productive, B, collect data so they can make it safer and make more informed decisions, they're set up with the infrastructure and the decisions already being made and the change management and the implementation already being completed, where they're able to, A, make use of that technology today, like I said, like online orientations or collection of safety submittals. The companies have those in place. That's just the way they do things. They don't have to go find a solution, make sure that it reaches their product, configure it, go through change management.

And so really it's about just being at the forefront. The ones that were at the forefront that have made the investment and gone through that cycle are finding themselves not scrambling, not having to react, maybe not have to have job sites... I've heard from GCs and partners that their job sites can say open, whereas other job sites they know have been shut down because they haven't got these processes in place. So it is a competitive advantage, but I like to bring it back, during this period, back to the worker. They can provide way less risk onsite for the workers and provide an environment that is safer to work in.

It's positive to see that at least it's been a catalyst that will be a change, hopefully, and as a new norm moving forward. I'm seeing a huge opportunity in terms of that safety infrastructure and attention to workers on site, not just technology, but the safety information and processes.

Brian Copta:

Can you say more about technology data systems and the implementation of which could be more advantageous now, more than ever perhaps?

Brad Tabone:

Yeah. These solutions... Again, we are reiterating some stuff here, but I think the key is there are solutions out there, like a worker sign-in book. Traditionally, this was used for emergency evacuations and worker hours, time in time out, for productivity and also for lag measurements like tracking your LTIs or your medical treatment rates, et cetera, which is the number of hours worked at the job site, divided by the amount of incidents to get your rates. And that really was the purpose of job sign-in books.

Now, job sign-in books with, say an extension like HammerTech's one where you can add in a checklist as a stage to that, which can then flag possible answers, which could show symptoms of COVID, send that notification out to a distribution group, which then stops the worker, there's a situation where you're collecting more data now. So you're collecting location information, you're collecting checklist information, on top of worker hours and the emergency evacuation, in which you can now use that information to do contract tracing. So if a worker did come on site, you could have a look at, okay, well in the previous five days and the locations that they've worked in, who else was around them? What other job sites have they been on? Their risk profile, et cetera. And that goes throughout orientations, meetings, submittals, everything. The idea is that building on top of the technology and the data points, you're able to then utilize that data to make more informed decisions and provide a reduced risk.

Brian Copta:

Wow, that's really interesting. In our last episode, you mentioned certain countries that you thought, when it comes to safety, doing a better job on average. Has that changed now? Are certain countries still doing as great a job? Or how has that changed?

Brad Tabone:

Interesting. I would have said that the UK was at the forefront of construction, and they probably still are, right, around safety process and the rest of it. But then the response of the UK government, in my opinion, and again, my opinion only, was slow on COVID and they're now suffering as one of the biggest epicenters per 100,000 people in the EU. So therefore, construction is impacted. Obviously it's a macro impact. Then you have countries like Taiwan, South Korea, and my homeland, Australia, which has totally surprised me, as kind of world leaders in how they've responded to COVID and their current infection rates and kind of bringing down that thing. Singapore was on that list, but Singapore, over the last month, hasn't spent the same effort and focus on their immigrant workers, which make up a huge proportion of their construction labor, and the living conditions that they live in, and therefore they're having a second round of outbreak.

This COVID is not just up to construction companies. Construction companies and vendors and workers can do what they do and kind of abide by guidances by the CDC, et cetera, and provide as safe a site as possible. But there are macro, obviously, elements and variables to this, which is how the government responds, et cetera. I wouldn't want to comment saying a country is doing better or worse from a construction lens. But I would say, say Australia, the outlook was looking probably the same as it is in Europe or here in North America and have really been able to flatten the curve. As of just about three days ago, they're talking about eliminating the actual virus from the country now because the transfer and the infection rates are so low.

And what that allows then is obviously you mix that with already stringent safety processes and companies already using technology to mitigate the risk of COVID prior to COVID, but expanding on that post-COVID, you have that elimination risk, which is a macro factor, mixed with stringent technology and construction processes. That paints a more rosy picture, I would say, for Australia and being a lucky country. But I wouldn't want to comment on from a construction process only.

It's time to be decisive, so engage workers, engage technology partners, engage other general contractor consultants, and put in place best in breed solutions that have been tested, where possible, prior to COVID.

Brian Copta:

That makes sense. That's very diplomatic. And I know we've touched on long-term recommendations that you would advise companies to adopt. Are there any immediate or stop-gap measures that construction companies could implement now as they start to revamp their long-term processes?

Brad Tabone:

There are obviously some that they just have to immediately look at, temperature checking of workers, capturing of information of personnel every single day, cleaning of surfaces. And there are things that can be done with or without technology, and really have to be done to stay open, right, by CDC guidelines. So they're all things that I'm sure every company has looked at and put in place and common things. I think now's the time for companies to, and this is just again, personal opinion, take a step back and realize there is a new norm. Our world isn't what surrounds us today, and more than likely... Even Australia, where we're looking to eliminate the virus over the pond, they're still looking at social distancing and other measures on the construction site for the long-term. This isn't something that's just going to go away. And we don't know if this is going to be a cyclical virus every single year, or if it's going to be eliminated, or if vaccines come in. There's a lot of unknowns.

So at the moment, I'd take a step back and just assume this is the new norm. I'd list down all the areas in which my company is deficient, against best practice, and speaking with other GCs and come up with a unified strategy. I wouldn't attack each one individually, each risk or item that's linked in a deficient. Obviously, an immediate solution has to go in place, manual or whatever it is. But stepping back and actually taking a strategic approach, because otherwise you would get a spaghetti solution that may solve the current issues from a technology standpoint, or investment, but long-term reinvestment's going to be required. Six to 12 months later that spaghetti solution is going to have to be unwound and you're going to have to go through it again. If you're going to put in the effort and the investment during this time, take a little bit of time to take a step back and come up with a strategic approach.

It's time to be decisive, so engage workers, engage technology partners, engage other general contractor consultants, and put in place best in breed solutions that have been tested, where possible, prior to COVID. This is a point that I really want to make and I'm talking to a lot of people about this. There's a lot of solutions being slapped together, which is great, by companies trying to pivot. That's great for them. It's great for the industry because there's going to be some great innovation during this period and they're trying to do the right thing by their shareholders, et cetera. But at the same time, a lot of these solutions are untested. So one thing I'd say to people as they're going through their strategic review and going through their solution review is, where possible, put solutions in place that have a good, strong history, because otherwise you're just putting your workers at risk.
Trial products, so don't be afraid, whether it's multiple solutions that can solve a problem... I'm speaking to GCs that for worker tracking are trialing five different solutions. Trial solutions. See which ones work. Set goals and clear scopes around that, and then be decisive. Don't get caught up with red ticket tape or anything. It's time for companies to actually be decisive now. Hold workers, staff, and management and vendors accountable during this period. And not all problems require technology as a solution. Just, I guess, passing and final comment is remember communication and human interaction is still the most powerful tool that we have. Don't forget your workers. Don't forget communication. Keep the transparency up.

Brian Copta:

That makes sense. Well, thank you so much, Brad, for sharing those insights and explaining them so well to our listeners.

Brad Tabone:

Thank you for having me on.

Brian Copta:

My pleasure. And thank you to everyone for being here with us today. We hope you'll join us next time for part three of the Safe and Sound series, where we'll talk to construction leaders in the US and Australia about how they're using job site safety and technology data systems to combat the pandemic and elevate the conversation around construction safety. See you next time.