Why is private sector construction still working in DC?
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Anonymous
| A consulting engineer to large construction projects said that there is no practical way to protect construction site workers and to maintain social distance. These are ticking time bombs for spread and illness (her language). |
Anonymous
That is awesome that you donated your PPE to the local hospital. Because those hospital workers are essential, and they are at risk and need full societal support. If you need your crew to work, they should have PPE if they are actually essential right now, too. You can pay the people on your payroll and send many of them home for a couple of weeks so that they live to work for you later. So can your subs. Ask your crew if they’d like to do that, or get a safe break at home and be eligible to file for unemployment relief. Right now there is no requirement to search for work on unemployment. But you can’t get it if your boss is still bringing you in. If your subs are hiring undocumented workers, they can show some basic humanity and pay them the paltry sum they usually do. There is now federal assistance so that companies can reclaim the payroll. Their families are the public, too. Ask yourself if you would be willing to take the risks they are taking. Want to commute in a small car with four other guys from across county to the job site? Ride three to a cab to deliver supplies? Share that portajohn? Just do everything you can to reduce to TRULY essential work and give your workers all the relief and safety that you yourself receive. If you are already doing this, excellent and good for you. But you know most aren’t. Most are using vulnerable workers to keep up their profits just as long as they can. Most are convincing themselves that their employees are just so grateful to be there and have the work. Most are making announcements about how few local cases there are and how it is important to be safe, but let’s power through this and be tough, because we are “essential.” And most won’t really feel any guilt or culpability if there’s an outbreak on their crew - they’ll be sad if someone dies, some kids lose their dad, oh, it will be SUCH a tragedy, but they won’t really, truly care that their drive to make that extra dollar and save an expense predictably led to a family’s devastation. So if it such important work that you would risk your spouses’s life over it, carry on, because some risks are necessary. But getting those luxury condos built right this minute? Doubt it. |
Anonymous
Definitely better for their families to become homeless. Definitely also better for a construction site (Could be your house) that has no roof to get rained and stormed into for endless months. |
Anonymous
| In the California Bay Area counties that have been leaders on this, they issued clarifying orders yesterday barring construction other than a few narrow exceptions. |
Anonymous
Sure, there is some work that is essential and needs to get wrapped up. And plenty of people need repairs, so you can’t shut everything down. Get the roof on. But most of those jobs can wait and you know it. The electric can wait. The window trim can wait. The drywall and paint can wait. The landscaping can wait. Just like haircuts, movies and shoe shopping can wait. |
Anonymous
| This is happening everywhere. It isn’t fair to the workers and their families. |
Anonymous
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North America's Building Trades Unions (NABTU), one of the country's largest labor federations, came out in support of categorizing construction workers as essential.
"It is vital to sustain construction and maintenance on the sixteen critical physical and virtual infrastructure sectors identified by the Department of Homeland Security, as well as projects of regional and national significance," NABTU president Sean McGarvey said. |
Anonymous
This is like responding to people saying “shut make-up counters at the mall down” that chemical engineers are critical. Like, yeah, of course some is critical. Your new deck, cabinet upgrades, or water-view condo projects are not critical to national or regional security. Don’t get all grand about yourself, GC. |
Anonymous
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The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), a branch of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), maintains a list of what they consider “critical infrastructure sectors.”
CISA issued coronavirus guidelines to help governments and businesses “ensure that employees essential to operations of critical infrastructure are able to continue working with as little interruption as possible.” These are industries that CISA considers essential: Chemical Sector Commercial Facilities Sector Communications Sector Critical Manufacturing Sector Dams Sector Defense Industrial Base Sector Emergency Services Sector Energy Sector Financial Services Sector Food and Agriculture Sector Government Facilities Sector Healthcare and Public Health Sector Information Technology Sector Nuclear Reactors, Materials, and Waste Sector Transportation Systems Sector Water and Wastewater Systems Sector What about construction? The construction industry didn’t specifically make CISA’s list. However, when you dig a little deeper, it’s clear that construction is an essential part of each one. The transportation sector is made up of highways, rail systems, and mass transit infrastructure. The water systems sector includes pipelines, plumbing, and wastewater treatment plants. The healthcare sector needs hospitals. And so on. Every single critical sector needs contractors and suppliers to provide materials and build facilities that they use to deliver essential, life-sustaining services. Construction industry leaders have called for government leaders to add construction to the list of essential businesses. According to a joint statement from the CEO of the Associated General Contractors of America (AGC) and the President of North America’s Building Trades Unions, “Government officials at all levels should treat the construction industry and the work it performs as vital and essential to the critical industries that must remain in operation.” |
Anonymous
Construction is a huge term. We should be limiting construction activity to essential work and keeping nonessential construction workers safe. Building a lab to study coronavirus? Essential. Supplying materials to contractors that build that lab? For sure. Repairing roofs, pest control, helping fix faulty electric orl eaking pipes? Yes, that is good, too. New kitchen tiles? A bathroom overhaul? New bedroom addition? Fancy new front door? Upgrading the carpets? Fresh mulch on the garden beds? Six new estate houses on that empty lot? A new pool for an apartment building? Landscaping the water trap area of a new shopping mall? NO. It can wait. |
Anonymous
The Residences and Towne Centre at City Ridge in NW DC? |
Anonymous
Not in standard contracts I’ve seen. |
Anonymous
| Builders say shutting down a job site is less like shuttering a restaurant than firing the chef while the roast is in the oven. If you abandoned a project halfway, materials like insulation and exposed wiring degrade in the elements. “There’s a sense that a 100-year-old building will deteriorate but continue to perform its job,” said Ehren Gresehover, a structural engineer in New York. “But when you start opening things up, start demo’ing a little slab, you might unbrace a column, and that column has temporary shoring, or perhaps it’s only temporary braced, and that’s less stable.” What’s safe for a weekend might not be safe for several months unattended. Once a project gets underway, developers say, the timeline is tight. Skilled workers are in high demand. “Construction is like a train,” one Chicago developer told me. “If you stop a welder, it could take two months to get them back on site.” Delays can break contracts, they say, triggering expensive legal fights or jeopardizing the leases that future tenants have signed. |
Anonymous
Some people may consider having a Wegmans in this area to be essential. |
Anonymous
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Even though inspectors are considered essential by the CISA guidelines, Montgomery county (and private inspectors) have discontinued in-house inspections of residential construction. Practically, that’s going to cause some issues even with ongoing construction. Supply chain issues may also come up.
Our builder was willing to start a planned remodel but for this and for this and other reasons, we delayed. I’m glad we were not in the middle which would have made this harder. |