Reply to Why is private sector construction still working in DC?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=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.[/quote]

No one wants to leave an open building to rot in the spring rain. Close it up. Finish what you need to do to stabilize it. Keep working if the building is a new hospital or something else essential, But don’t start something new and don’t pretend that because SOME construction is essential, then ALL construction is essential. Get as many people off the site as possible.

Try this: Dentists are essential, we can all agree. But it is wise to close dental practices to normal routines right now because they are performing needlessly risky cleanings that can wait. If a patient has an urgent issue, they call and set an appointment to get it taken care of.

Right now, most construction is continuing its merry way as if there is no risk and all is normal. But of course, all is not normal. Workers are at unnecessary risk.[/quote]

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