COVID-19 – sector impact WEBINARS
that as a sector it had ‘undertaken massive changes together in a short period of time – it can be done if the will is there’. As a result of operating procedures and social
distancing, revisions were made about when to work, how to travel to site, driving on site and site access and egress, as well as issues around hospitality areas, avoiding close working and cleaning of areas. The Construction Leadership Council released guidance in turn that said ‘where it is not possible to follow the social distancing guidelines in full in relation to a particular activity, you should consider whether that activity needs to continue’. On PPE, there was guidance on masks but a ‘big
divergence of opinion as to their value’, while the ASFP was planning to develop guidance from its own perspective. Moving to supply chain issues, Mr Rowan said that there was ‘major disruption and sites shut’ when lockdown began, while builder’s merchants were shut as ‘non essential’ businesses. Manufacturing was also shut down, but now sites are opening with no supplies. Financially, there were a ‘lot of options’ and a ‘whole load of information’, with concerns over the furlough scheme, including that ‘many companies are paying wages through it but getting staff to work’. In some cases furloughing was ‘putting off some of the inevitable, but maybe it’s providing respite – at some point of course this will have to be paid for’. However, in the long term he struck a more cautious
note, adding that a ‘collapse in income’ signalled that things were ‘going to change’. There was ‘still a problem with confidence that needs to be considered’ and unemployment means spending will take time to recover. The most optimistic reduction is a 10% drop in gross domestic product, and an expectation that the economy will not ‘return to normal’ until the second half of 2022.
Should there be a second wave of the pandemic,
it ‘won’t recover’ until 2023, Mr Rowan said, although he concluded that ‘what will happen will happen’, and that it will probably be ‘somewhere in the middle’ of predictions. The ‘good side’ of the situation was discovering
the ‘new ways of working’, which were ‘quite exciting even though some things will never change – a lot of business travel will never come back’.
FPA
Mr O’Neill brought the session to a close by highlighting that the clarification on key workers was ‘incredibly helpful, but arrived slightly late’, and said that the ‘real issue’ was about ‘whether as an industry we could continue to work’. The clarification, once distributed, meant the sector and the FPA ‘started to get work again’, but the message throughout ‘is to maintain safety’. From his perspective, Mr O’Neill said that ‘thankfully
we haven’t seen a big spike in arson, and we’re seeing buildings awaken again quite safely’ – however, the big change ‘is going to be the change in the risk’, such as altered working practices and changes in footfall. It will ‘take some time to recover’, and ‘the big message we’ve been trying to push out is that it is important to continue your risk assessments and make sure that you’ve got business continuity plans’. The FPA will be ‘looking at risk in a changed
world’, and training was one area that ‘has changed dramatically’, but it was ‘important for us [as a sector] to continue dialogue and work very closely together as an association. If we can take a united front from this and work together, and play to our strengths, hopefully we can provide a better service to the industry in general’
A report on the second session will be published in our September issue.
www.frmjournal.com JULY/AUGUST 2020
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