IFMA MADISON VIRTUAL COVID-19 ROUNDTABLE PRESENTATION
Earlier in April, 2020 IFMA Madison asked our Chapter Members to get involved with a Virtual Roundtable to discuss the impact COVID-19 has had on their operations and teams. The following questions were presented to Members:
1. How has your business or Facility Management team been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic? Are you reducing any services or adding any new services?
2. What changes have you implemented since the COVID-19 pandemic has affected Wisconsin? Have you developed any new procedures?
3. Are you offereing any new services (to facilities, customers, tenants, the public, etc.) as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic?
4. Have you started any planning for how you will continue to deliver services or provide Facility Management service in the future? Any thoughts on future spending or budgeting?
The Chapter received responses from:
Matt Tranchita, C. Coakley Relocation Systems - [email protected]
Mike Hoadley, Ring & DuChateau, LLC - [email protected]
Mark Schwenn, A&J Property Restoration DKI - [email protected]
Tim Bliefernicht, MG&E - [email protected]
Chris McGuire, CG Schmidt - [email protected]
We sincerely thank those that took the time to respond and share their informaton with us! The data is presented in the same order as listed above.
1. How has your business or Facility Management team been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic? Are you reducing any services or adding any new services?
- We have not been impacted from this. We are still working with our customers to help everyone through this time. Our company is currently moving more BSC Fume Hoods for our scientific company to help test for this virus. We have also been helping the campus empty hundreds of dorm rooms to make room for sick patients and doctors/nurses who need to be quarantined.
- Ring & Du personnel are all working remotely using cloud-based Office Suite, Teams, and AutoCAD. It's going very well. We had the software and hardware installed before the pandemic and all we needed to upgrade was the AT&T fiber speed to our office to handle the added VPN traffic.
- Operations as usual with the inclusion of PPE on every project. Virtual meetings for sales and administration staff
- In numerous ways. No on site customer bill payment, work from home, split staff shifts, etc. Less staff on site, also less customers on site due to work from home. Additional cleaning/disinfection services to facilities to better protect critical staff/operations.
- Under the Governor’s “Safer at Home” Emergency Order, construction companies are considered “Essential Businesses and Operations” and construction projects are broadly classified as “Essential Infrastructure.” Consequently, we’ve been able to keep most of our construction projects up and running. Because the construction industry employs a significant number of people, the fact that we’re still working helps mitigate the economic damage of the COVID-19 pandemic. We’ve had a few project cancellations as our clients reassess and prioritize their needs moving forward.
2. What changes have you implemented since the COVID-19 pandemic has affected Wisconsin? Have you developed any new procedures?
-Since the pandemic our crew is required to wear PPE to help reduce the risk of contracting COVID-19.
- Aside from the typical social distancing and Safer at Home rules, we've organized how/when we communicate internal within the departments and how the leadership communicates vision and passion via video-chats and emails.
- PPE on every project and non essential visits and in person meetings have been eliminated.
- Many: no on site customer bill payment, no outside guests on site unless emergency/life safety related, etc. including shelter-in-place (on site) solutions for critical staff.
- The construction industry is probably better than most at adapting what we do to changing circumstances. Most of our projects are unique and we’re always building for different Owners under different requirements and circumstances. We’re also continually adjusting our safe work practices to address job-specific hazards as conditions change and for the settings where we are working. Some of the new things we’re doing in response to the COVID-19 pandemic include:
- Daily worker screening to identify any workers who may be at-risk of spreading the virus to others.
- Modifying our work plans to maintain social distancing requirements.
- Implementing strict hygiene and surface disinfection protocols at our job sites and work settings.
- Having people work remotely, where possible.
- Conducting virtual meetings to minimize face-to-face interactions.
- Added PPE including a mandatory glove policy and the wearing of face coverings when it’s not possible to maintain the required six-foot separation between people
We’ve also ramped up our internal communications. We publish a weekly newsletter that goes out to all of our employees informing them of the latest COVID-19 developments; what we’re doing in response to the situation; providing tips about how to work from home effectively; and generally keeping people connected through the sharing of stories and experiences.
3. Are you offereing any new services (to facilities, customers, tenants, the public, etc.) as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic?
- Yes. We're MEP engineers that do a lot of work in healthcare so we've been working with local/regional/national healthcare providers to implement surge capacity plans that have laid dormant for years. We're also reaching out to non-healthcare facilities (offices, schools, colleges, etc) to think about what happens when we're allowed back to work. We have a facility assessment team that will look at air handling systems, UV lighting, filtration, etc to develop plans for individual facilities. Experts are saying there's a good chance the Covid-19 virus will re-surge again later this fall/winter so we want to encourage people to get ahead of the curve.
- Offering full decontamination services.
- Yes, alternative ways/locations to pay utility bills. Accelerating converting internal processes to electronic versus paper.
- We’re doing our best to help our clients through this difficult time. We’ve donated much needed N-95 respirators and HEPA filters to our healthcare customers. Many our people have volunteered personal time to fill hand sanitizer bottles and sew face coverings for healthcare workers. At our school projects, we’re keeping students and teachers informed about the progress of their new schools through weekly on-line newsletters.
4. Have you started any planning for how you will continue to deliver services or provide Facility Management service in the future? Any thoughts on future spending or budgeting?
- We have been actively keeping our crews busy and hope to until this all goes away.
- We have limited all spending to essential materials in order to serve our customers as usual.
- Pandemic staff measures are already in place. Budgeting changes due to situation in process.
- Construction always feels the impact of economic downturns later than other businesses. We’ve seen a significant slow-down in the number of proposal requests for new projects. That means we’ll likely experience a downturn in our business as the economy begins to recover down the road. However, it seems like the economic fundamentals prior to the pandemic were pretty solid, so we’re hopeful the timetable for economic recovery will be a little faster this time around.
