Scott Pray | President, D.F. Pray Inc.
1. What are some of the notable projects that D.F. Pray is involved in in Rhode Island and Bristol County, Mass.? We have been fortunate, with several projects in the retail, distribution, assisted living (health care) and multifamily sectors, which have kept moving through the early days of the pandemic. These include Briarcliffe Manor in Johnston.
2. How have you maintained momentum on projects through the COVID-19 pandemic? Did you face any stoppages or supply problems? At the beginning of the pandemic, we were completely stopped on most projects and then slowly able to resume construction. However, several projects were slowed because of impacts from COVID-19 on the supply chain, negatively affecting schedules and subsequent completion dates. A few projects have been put on the proverbial shelf and have not come back yet, but we are still hopeful they will in 2021.
3. What distancing measures do you have in place to ensure your workers remain safe? First, utilizing the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines, including social distancing, we developed our own policy. The COVID-19 construction job site safety [policy] emphasizes social distancing, continuous use of face masks and hand sanitation. From the beginning, our entire team immediately worked together creating a specialized policy, adopting a “no exceptions to the rule” mantra and our own job site COVID-19 check-in app for mobile devices. This was required to be filled out daily and in full by our subcontractors for each of their employees, vendors and owners to gain access to sites. Second, we built our own hand-wash and sanitizing stations. Third, we implemented our written procedures to protect all workers on our projects, through a series of online meetings with our operations personnel to enforce the policy. D.F. Pray’s priority is the safety of all our employees and subcontractors.
4. Rhode Island kept construction open through the pandemic. How did that affect your business? The Rhode Island-based projects that continued working through the pandemic provided a bright light and some semblance of order in these trying times.
5. What do you think will be one of the lasting procedures for construction as a result of the pandemic? We will continue to put the health of anyone on our projects ahead of schedules, letting the science and medical communities show us the path forward. Personal protective equipment will always be available on our sites, which will have positive effects long after this pandemic is over. I think you will see the construction industry workers much more willing to use extended PPE preventatively. In the future, the stigma of workers who are wearing a mask will cease and wearing a mask will be viewed as being proactively cautious.
Mary MacDonald is a PBN staff writer. Contact her at Macdonald@PBN.com.
