For the global construction workforce, 2020 was a year like no other.

The COVID-19 pandemic upended daily work life in ways many had never experienced, ranging from distanced jobsite crews and no-contact education and training to shifts, halts and cancellations of long-scheduled projects and managing job details, staff, and clients with little or no face-to-face interaction.

Strategies had to be reassessed for growth, or even survival, in a much-changed present and still-uncertain future.

当前和未来的建筑参与者创新了完成工作的方法，并且经过10个月的流行，该行业劳动力的韧性在如何应对挑战方面很明显。病毒协议和远程互动现在是施工中的标准操作程序，但是适应新的常规，为项目和职业压力增加了另一个维度。

您一天的一部分

杰里·斯特雷尔（Jerry Strehle）是一名经验丰富的工会熨斗，在纽约市都会区拥有46个本地的46人，他大步采取了新的健康和安全措施。“现在，您知道您必须提前10分钟开始工作并检查温度。你必须戴上面具。你必须洗手。它只是您一天的一部分。”

斯特雷尔（Strehle）是去年3月开始在州立桥梁项目的一名工作人员的一员，当时是由国有的锁定开始的。他的项目继续是“必不可少的”。他说，有些同事最初离开了工作，有些人再也没有回来。他说，作为五岁的父亲，包括三个大学，“我别无选择”。在现场，他每天戴两个口罩，并确保周围的每个人都遵循相同的规则。

“You can’t come onsite until you face me,” says Andre Curtis, a 29-year union laborer with local 202R who is the first line of defense on a jobsite just outside Washington, D.C. “And to face me, you have to have your hard hat, your vest, your glasses and your mask.” Working traffic control, part of his job is to make sure anyone entering the site follows safety protocols, he says, adding that the adjustment was easier because he has always been part of a strong safety culture.

Even with precautions in the UK, London builders now are under government pressure to cut worker overcrowding in travel on public transportation, to jobsites, or face projectss being shut down, with about 40 contractor CEOs holding an emergency “summit” with officials last month to develop solutions..

The new virus risk was potent for workers. “That you stay home when sick is not something that tradespeople in general had done prior to COVID-19,” says Osha Ashworth, business representative for an electrical workers local in San Francisco. “Knowing I could potentially spread a deadly virus has really had me focus on taking every precaution,” she says. “Maybe the silver lining will be better habits after the pandemic is over.”

Silver Linings

Another pandemic silver lining is technological efficiency. Rusty Roten, president of a greater Los Angeles’ electrical workers’ local, says regulations forced the union to close its ever-busy dispatch rooms, where daily jobs post to a monitor. Another local moved to broadcast jobs that workers could access remotely via the Zoom app. “We would never have done this,” says Roten, noting the extra expense. “Technical change was forced on us, and it was a good thing.”

Steve Rank, operating engineers’ union executive director of safety, notes joint labot-contractor safety efforts on the $1-billion Kansas City, Mo., airport project that include use of proximity devices for workers to enable contact tracing of all employees. But despite hassles of added mandates, “In some cases, projects are tracking ahead of schedule,” he says.

On an upgrade of a critical natural gas distribution station in Illinois, socially distanced crews worked three shifts, seven days a week, to get the job completed by its August deadline, says Matt Bivins, project manager and estimator for contractor Meade. “We felt like even as COVID did impact the project, we would be able to roll with it, and it worked out well,” he says.

“Having extra protocols in place for Covid-19 turned into a near ordinary response to situations construction workers face daily,” says Greg Lalevee, business manager of operating engineers’ Local 825 in New Jersey and an international union vice president. “The commitment to safety contributed to keeping work moving.”

The COVID regulations have interrupted routine inspection flow and building site access, with added challenges of enforcing safety compliance, says Jamie Taylor, senior building inspector for the city of El Segundo, Calif. He adds that while inspectors are authorized to leave non-compliant sites, “if we do that, the job is held up and nobody gets paid.”

Remote Control

对于现在的许多人来说，通过顺序或选择，与同龄人的身体分离产生了影响。

A new survey of 1,000 design and construction professionals by recruitment firms Hays for UK industry publication Building, said that about 25% of respondents aised concern that childcare during the country’s first lockdown would limit career progression. The figure rises to 35% for women.

Even so, more than half thought flexible working arrangements are having a positive effect on employer organization success, with 72% welcoming the arrangements for better work-life balance

The “office” for Emily Sullivan, a Clark Construction purchasing director in San Francisco, now is her San Mateo, Calif., dining room, shared with husband, Adam, a company project executive, and their son Edric, 6, a first-grader who needs frequent reminders to stay attached to online learning modules.

With a fourth grader as well, “it is a challenge keeping them engaged, and myself in meetings,” she says. “The key I have found is planning ahead with your partner on who has what meetings, and simply trying to come to terms with not everything being perfect.”

For company chiefs, managing staff, projects and clients under COVID-19 norms pushes new buttons.

Daniel Crouch, who owns a small Los Angeles-based residential contractor, says the biggest challenge came early when the state, county and municipalities issued different safety guidelines that needed to be implemented quickly. He made the runs to Home Depot for hand sanitizer and other safety items. But fear of the virus has not deterred workers from showing up at the firm’s jobs.

“My tile guys are the ones that have been hit the hardest,” says Crouch, speaking of a six-brother subcontracting team, all of whom contracted the virus, with one fatality.

“ It’s more difficult to maintain the connection with co-workers that builds teamwork and culture, stimulates collaboration and the feeling like part of the larger company. This interaction generally leads to innovation, productivity and ultimately a better project,” says Gerald Salontai, president of engineer Hull & Associates and a veteran design firm CEO. “While staff have adapted remarkably well, the virtual environment is no substitute for normal day-to-day interaction.”

He advises managers to “check on team members routinely, plan ahead more effectively and learn how to work together via video conference. Managers will need to push best practices to keep their top performers.”

Making connections

Meanwhile, the next generation of hoped-for performers—and their teachers and mentors—are learning to cope in the current no-contact academic environment.

Despite rising concerns about potential spread of COVID-19 on campuses, Purdue University committed to in-person learning for the fall 2020 semester. “If you had asked me in August, I would have said we’d be lucky to make it to October before we had to shut down,” says Brad Benhart, an associate professor in the construction management program. “The students were very responsible. I’d be more concerned about going to WalMart than going to class.”

Eduardo Godoy, an Arizona State University CM program freshman, was concerned about the lack of direct connection to other students, faculty and industry partners when he started classes in August, and even considered leaving the field.

到十一月，戈伊（Godoy）转向了所有虚拟学习。尽管有距离，他还是开发了同行链接，并期待着追求他的CM专业。“我确实看到了我的未来，”戈伊说。“我现在更加自信。”

But virus-induced stress is a fact of industry life, although Salontai says it is controllable and even beneficial. “We have a choice to succumb to the stress or adapt to it,” he says. “Many people thrive because it pushes” their limits."

Joan Zofnass, a psychologist with a private practice who also is human resources director at industry management consultant EFCG, says “social distancing alone can create an enormous amount of stress and be a major distraction from focus on work issues.”

Zofnass,许多工业上提供建议ry participants, says “allowing people to vent a bit” through regular group interactions can help.

“It is exhausting trying to sustain optimism in a world where the news is almost always negative,” she says. “We need to acknowledge the uncertainty and move to the next phase of what we can do right now to make things more tolerable and hopefully better.”