HOW B&F PROJECT SITES ARE PREPARING FOR THE NEW NORMAL!

The world has realized and accepted that it must learn to live with COVID-19. Returning to work, especially at construction sites, is fraught with risk as P Nagarajan, Head – EHS, B&F IC, explains. “There are directives from the Central Government, various State Governments and local authorities to be religiously followed. On ground, we have had to prepare our sites for the new normal with several additional controls to deploy workmen and staff including improve infrastructure facilities both at the sites and habitats, thoroughly sanitize all vehicles for transportation, verify compliance to safety standards, manage social distancing, integrate risk management of COVID-19 to the existing EHSMS, implement & review and monitor through virtual safety audits.” 

At cities, with only in-situ workmen allowed, deploying new ones is far tougher as M Nachiappan, DGM – EHS shares. “Considering the additional COVID risks, it requires the approval of the Project Director or Project Manager. We have to avoid workmen from known hotspots or containment zones, allocate separate rooms for them, ensure the availability of a medical practitioner at the workmen habitat, obtain self-declaration forms from them, medically check and finally give them an EHS induction.”

Preparing the ground

Preparing sites for the post COVID-19 phase involves some big, overarching measures as mentioned earlier and a number of smaller changes in the facilities: at site offices, canteens, P&M and carpentry workshops, stores, to keep people safe from infection. “We have made changes in seating arrangements, marking entries and exits, staggering the works, treating other high-touch surfaces and put up several contactless hand sanitizer dispensing systems,” mentions Manager – EHS, N Gabrial Fernandez. “We have increased space in canteens wherever possible, introduced staggered timings for dining, prepared quarantine rooms, rearranged accommodations, made arrangements to prevent workmen from venturing outside their camps and are vigorously promoting self-hygiene and cleanliness.” 

Before allowing workmen inside the project site, all the workplaces must be verified for safe condition of work. After the lockdown, resumption of operations can pose several hazards such as cranes left unattended, material on walkways, shuttering boards in half de-shuttered stage, excavations that have developed some seepage and the like. “A comprehensive compliance verification process is warranted,” stresses Nagarajan and enumerates some of the areas that require clearance: safety in accessway, fall protection arrangement, P&M, temporary electrical installations, excavations, formwork, scaffolds and working platforms.

Marrying COVID risk mitigation and the overall EHS management system

Considering its impact, it was crucial to consider COVID-19 as an additional risk in all activities & processes and use existing EHS Management Systems to mitigate it in an integrated and effective manner in all phases of the PDCA cycle. These include screening workmen, obtaining self-declaration forms, doing medical check-ups, and slightly revising the EHS induction programme. “The number of workmen participating are restricted and the number of programmes increased,” informs Nachiappan, “including an indepth programme on COVID-19 itself.” Training modules have been developed and shared with sites and risk assessments are reviewed with respect to COVID-19 related controls. ‘Safe to Start’ card includes several additional checks such as whether social distancing is being maintained, whether any workmen are showing symptoms, whether high-risk spaces have been disinfected. 

A vital component of this process is Emergency Response / Business Continuity that now includes reporting of suspected cases from site, quarantine of suspected individuals, isolation & treatment, reporting to local authorities, disinfecting areas worked by the suspected individual, contact tracing of people who have worked with the suspected individual and reporting to Cluster / HQ for further coordinated response. 

Safety audits, virtually

With travel restrictions, B&F has introduced Virtual Safety Audits (VSA) to monitor activities at the various sites. The EHS – Head or the Cluster EHS Manager collects information on critical activities at projects, then schedules, and conducts audits on MS Teams involving key members including Cluster Project Managers. “We sometimes call for surprise audits too which is now possible,” chips in Nagarajan. “Compliance verification is with the same mechanism. Cluster EHS Managers have been given a target of 10 audits a month,” he adds. Direct interaction with the employees is feasible to understand their levels of awareness and implementation and improvements at various locations can be verified too. The advantages of VSAs are many: 59 projects were audited in just 20 days including some located in the north – east and in rural areas, some of which may not have been covered if things were normal.

Implement & review

Based on comprehensive inputs from across the board, SOPs were developed and rolled out across the IC followed by a slew of meetings to familiarize them, drive understanding and implementation. “Action plans with clear accountability and responsibility matrixes were ready even before we resumed operations,” informs Nagarajan. There were quizzes, special review and monitoring meetings and targeted inspections to ensure complete compliance to the SOPs.

Fighting to keep safe in dangerous cities

“A little knowledge is always dangerous,” warns D G Patil, Manager – EHS at Mumbai’s Crescent Bay project site who has been keeping his 450 workmen calm and safe by having medical facilities readily available at site. COVID Response Team Leader and EHS Officer, Arpan Dey is much in the same boat at the Emerald Isle (Phase – II) project in Powai, Mumbai, managing his 850-strong workforce. “Being too big a group for us to approach all together, we deal with smaller groups of 10- 20 to drive the need to strictly follow all precautionary measures. Doctors from famous organisations visit our site to spread awareness.” he mentions. “We even instituted a Social Distance SCOPE Award for our COVID Warriors to motivate them.” Both sites have remained free of positive cases. 

Awards seem to be following Senior Engineer-EHS, Nallasivam B. When posted at Omkar, Worli, the project won the
5 Star and Sword of Honour award; now at Piramal Aranya project, he has helped the project win not only a Sword of Honour but a RoSPA Gold Award too that are reflective of Nallasivam and team’s effective monitoring and implementation of safety measures. 

Young, dynamic, and self-motivated Prateek Kataria is the EHS Officer at the Gomti Enclave site at Lucknow, where he is referred to as ‘Safety Sahib’, shares, “I realized that the workmen were afraid of the virus spreading at the camp due to their ignorance of precautionary measures and the negligence of others.” Hence the efforts of Prateek and the COVID Response Team backed by CPM, Subhashis Panja, Cluster EHS Manager, Dr. Sanjai Srivastava and Project In-charge, Manoj Kr. Mishra have been to ensure that the measures were well understood and strictly followed at site.

The need for re-training

A similar ploy was successfully adopted by EHS Engineer, M Sandheep at the Raintree Boulevard project. “We resumed operations on April 27th though our real challenge has been to ensure social distancing for which we have formed a special team to impart special training.”

“Workmen, supervisors, EHS managers all need to be re-trained to this new normal,” reminds P Nagarajan. “Maintaining social distancing is a new concept for people to understand and implement.”

“One of my biggest strengths is my ability to stay calm under pressure,” declares EHS Officer, M C S Chauhan at the Indira Gandhi Hospital project at Dwarka in New Delhi; a perfect trait when faced with a crisis, one might say. “We started to spread awareness during the ‘Nation Safety Week 2020’ by training our workmen and supervisors using various digital modes and social media platforms.” An additional responsibility for Chauhan and his team was to oversee the conversion of a part of the facility into a COVID-19 quarantine centre. 

Managing large gangs

The Hyderabad Airport project site had 2424 workmen spread across three workmen habitats when the lockdown was announced. “For 45 days, we kept them engaged and in good health,” declares a battle-hardened EHS engineer,
S D Lovaraju. “We followed the guidelines issued by the Government Authorities, Client and HQ. I was also a member of the COVID Controls implementation verification committee to daily verify COVID controls and update the COVID Emergency Committee Members.” Being a brownfield project, work on some fronts like rapid exit taxiways, baggage management area and roof sheeting repair works had to be taken up with restricted workmen for restricted hours which were carried out without incident.

EHS Engineer, Ankit Kumar’s day at the CAPFIMS Hospital Project, begins with a purpose: to ensure the health and safety of his 1950 workmen. “We have successfully kept diseases at bay thanks to our dedicated efforts,” he says triumphantly. Apart from arranging 5000 masks and 200 hand sanitizers, Ankit and team connected with the Construction Medical Officer (CMO) and tied up with the Cronus Multi Specialty Hospital for medical treatment for staff and workmen during the lock-down. At the C-17 Beddown Infrastructure Facilities, AFS Hindan (Ghaziabad),
EHS In-charge, Anup Sharma is thrilled that his clients, the Indian Air Force and Boeing, have given him the go-ahead to restart operations, a reflection of his wonderful efforts during the lockdown to keep everyone safe and healthy at site. 

“I joined the Adora De Goa project at the beginning of 2020,” shares an excited EHS Engineer, G. Raja Sekar, “and for a month I was completely involved in embedding Behavioural Based Safety (BBS) among the employees and 616 workmen. Almost immediately thereafter COVID-19 came to us.” Raja feels that his efforts bore fruit in their fight against the virus in which they were supported by a local NGO, and the health department. “If the right amount of information is shared at the right time, people’s perceptions can be turned right and used as a tool to influence behaviour that goes a long way to help implement a positive EHS culture at the workplace,” he counsels seriously.

The threat is alive even away from the cities

Rural-based projects like the MVDC Test Track project have their own unique challenges as EHS In-charge,
C. Vijayanandan shares. “Since our project comes under the Thiruvannamalai District, we had to follow some very stringent guidelines from the Collectorate about the COVID-19 preventive measures and, in the process, met the expectations of our client, Mahindra & Mahindra too,” he shares. “When we restarted work, managing the new local workmen was a big task with regard to safety culture and adherence to preventive measures for which our dynamic Corona Prevention plan helped greatly,” he smiles with satisfaction.

“Having resumed operations, the challenge now is to be sharp to follow the various directives,” says P Nagarajan in summation. “Constant monitoring of compliance and daily reviews are imperative. The engineer at site is responsible for safe starts every day and our emergency responses must be quick and prompt. It calls for an entirely new mindset, but we are prepared,” he concludes confidently.