Q2 2020 Flywheel

Working and Communicating During These Unprecedented Times

By: Tatiana James

I don’t know about you but adjusting to working-from-home full-time has come with its fair shares of ups and downs. On the up-side, there’s no longer a commute to and from the office, which has done wonders for my gas bill over the past few months! I know in speaking with several others of you, the reality is that no commute to and from the office has allowed you more time with your families, which has been a welcomed change from the hustle and bustle of years gone by. Additionally, the flexibility that has grown around the “office” has been incredible to see and hear about. Waking up early to squeeze in some work hours, juggling kids doing online school, caring for elderly or ailing family members, and getting critical work done takes incredible flexibility by everyone involved. The RQ family has once again shown our ability to maintain that flexibility in spades, while juggling numerous balls in the air.

On the downside, however, having three little kiddos running around my house (and not in school), has made my meetings a little more interesting. I can still remember sitting in a virtual meeting a few weeks ago and I promise you, I was saying something constructive and important to the conversation, only to have a consistent knocking echoing from my make-shift office door. It wasn’t long before I was interrupted by another attendee on the meeting who said, “I think someone is knocking at your door. Maybe you can get that?” Cringe! I had hoped that my colleagues couldn’t hear my chorus of three kids knocking in unison on the door for me to open a snack for each one of them. But alas, I know I’m not alone in this adjustment to the new “normal.” I will also say that the daily lack of interaction in the kitchen or hallway and camaraderie that has occurred during these past few months sometimes makes me feel like an island unto myself.

The ups and downs of how the working world has changed in the last three months doesn’t just include those of us who have been able to work from home. For our many team members working on our essential project jobsites, the additional measures put in place to safely produce quality work has been immense. Staggering subcontractors on-site, hand washing stations, accommodating unexpected disruptions, daily wearing masks to protect everyone at the jobsite – the measures taken have not gone unnoticed and the extra effort put in by our field teams has gone above and beyond the call of duty!

During this time, each of our departments and functions has been working hard to pursue new work, support our work and our people, and support our teams in the field who are executing our winningest year of work ever from our 2019 backlog! We wanted to share with you all the new (and old) ways we’ve been keeping the flywheel moving forward here at RQ with our daily mission to provide the best built environment, while being the first choice of all stakeholders.

Pursuing Work

Despite the current climate in commercial construction nationwide, our bid volume target here at RQ for 2020 is still right on track as of June. Our Marketing, Estimating, and Design Pursuits teams have not missed a beat as they maneuver the art of sharing PDFs, conducting virtual bid days, utilizing Microsoft (MS) Teams for daily communication, while also capitalizing on the Zoom meetings, when both internal and external stakeholders need to be involved. For those of you who haven’t used or don’t know what MS Teams is, I couldn’t put it any better than Microsoft puts it – it’s a unified communication and collaboration platform that combines persistent workplace chat, video meetings, file storage, and application integration – especially when filling in our incredibly complex bid sheets in Excel, making edits on a proposal, or reviewing preliminary designs in Revit.

Our Pursuits team is regularly reminded that our subcontracting partners are in the same boat as us – thrust into working from home or very remotely, if at all. From one of our Estimating team members: “We all are having to be nimble with the work ahead of us. Having real-life conversations with our subs has really helped us to grow our relationships and remind us we’re in this together.” The communication is flowing constantly day in and day out, whether in the more traditional forms of email, phone calls, texts (for immediacy) and/or GoToMeetings to effectively check in on tasks, deliverables, or team check-ups, or the use of more integrative applications. In fact, to jazz things up in weekly Team meetings, our Estimating team started dubbing each meeting with a different theme: ball caps, beach gear, sailors, and more. If you ask around, you might be able to find a great screen shot of our virtual Estimating team in action.

Support Work –Accounting, Small Business, HR/OD, etc.

Whether we’re seeking to reach out to small businesses in key areas where we work, encouraging vendors to accept EFT payments, instead of checks, answering employee questions, or conducting significantly more video-based interviews for potential new team members – we’ve been able to adapt in “virtually” every way (pun intended) during this pandemic time. Many of our manual processes have been forced to be executed electronically, which has helped to streamline much of what we do. There is no replacing the in-person chats or interviews in the office or conference room (fully), but we have continued to operate effectively enough, even with the growing pains of learning how to effectively use new applications or having to hop back on a Teams call when it drops or you see an array of frozen faces on your screen. Technology can’t replace human interaction, but it has allowed us to remain fully operational during a time when many things have been uncertain in this world.

Execute Work – Design and Field Construction

How about all the designing we do for our active projects? How has this all been functioning during this time, you might ask? Cue BIM 360, Bluebeam and several other applications already outlined. All our design teams are working on the same model/documents via the cloud in BIM 360, including consultants, so we haven’t missed a beat regarding our workflow during this time. Models/Documents are published for all to utilize in “real time.” Bluebeam has allowed us to share design quality control redline discussions for our Design QC reviews. All the reviewers redline one set of drawings, and comments are posted “live” for others to view. Tools like GoTo continue to be mainstay and are used for everything from team trainings to government meetings and beyond. I liked how one designer mentioned that the use of MS Teams is a tool that’s “a bit better than picking up the phone every time you have a small question or comment. I think it is a way to replace those times when we would get up and walk to someone’s desk. It’s a way for us to carry on our “normal” in office discussions without physically being together.”

In addition to executing pursuit or project deliverables, our architecture team continues to work on internal team development as well by, for instance, using GoTo to learn more about specifications at a high level – what their purpose is, what the specs cover in our documentation, how they relate to drawings, types of specifications to prepare, and what drives the formatting for these important documents on each and every project. Through regular patterns/rhythms/routines, our architecture team continues to focus on the bigger picture – executing great quality work in support of our Mission.

Field Operations

As the news of COVID rapidly led to each state enforcing mandatory lockdown, there was a lot of uncertainty on what this would mean to our projects under construction. For many companies, quarantine meant construction was on hold until further notice. Once we learned that our work – as “essential” – meant we could keep working, we had to figure out the “how”. The safety measures for the field had to be rapidly developed and implemented based on the ever-evolving guidance from the CDC. This required daily (if not hourly) phone and email updates to implement new processes… and lots of signage.

On the West Coast, we added hand wash stations throughout the sites. We established controlled access to our jobsite trailers where access was controlled by establishing set entrance and exit doors. Sanitation was monitored throughout the day, with extra care for frequently touched surfaces and bathrooms. Signs were posted in multiple areas to remind workers to distance and sanitize, and informational signs provided updated COVID facts.

Personnel were screened at the start of each day and were required to fill out a sign in-sheet to confirm they were symptom free, not feeling sick, had not been exposed, and had not traveled outside the local area, all requiring extra time and effort. Like the office teams, group gatherings had to be limited and the field had to deploy alternate means for ongoing communications to ensure the team, foreman, and trades were informed and able to continue safely.  All hands safety, subcontractor, and daily task hazard meetings were done via virtual conferencing and socially-distanced meetings. While performing work, employees and subcontractors needed to maintain a six foot distance from each other and wear a face covering. Everyone was reminded to bring multiple face coverings and wash them nightly. If work required closer proximity, additional PPE and face shields were required. All this distancing in the field meant added attention to what was happening, what needed to happen, with careful attention to the sequence of work – our teams had to be prepared for disruptions.

The East Coast looked similar to the West Coast. Since the onset, the team was in constant communication with our RQ COVID-19 Response team and RQ Leadership to receive, decipher, and distribute the corporate recommendations in addition to federal guidance across various field teams to aide in their situational management onsite. Since all projects are different they were assessed as such, while leaning on the guidance available. Onsite, they quickly took audit of our sanitization measures and realized that they needed to increase the number of temporary facilities across the sites. They deployed additional wash stations, spaced out temp facilities to reduce grouping and personal interaction, and also arranged them in a manner that the temp facilities were facing opposite directions.

For our jobsite offices, entry was restricted for any of the subcontractors as it was noticed they would group up and congregate during specific peak times of the day (ex. orientation, meetings, turning in dailies, etc.). They took the office safety a step further and built walls with plexiglass site windows so that RQ staff could be totally isolated from crews. Body positioning signage and feet placement signage were deployed at the offices so that folks remained 6 feet apart when staged at the office. All field and team meetings were moved to teleconferences. As the guidance changed they continued to update and communicate to all of our subcontractors and field teams.

The theme has been “Sanitization, Separation, and Sequencing.” They deployed sanitization stations inside all RQ buildings to provide field staff with hand wash/sanitization materials readily available at the work sites. They reviewed high touch point areas such as ladder access, stair towers, man-lifts, etc and performed routine sanitization of those high touch points. For larger areas, sprayers were filled with cleaner solutions to disinfect the areas quickly. All workers are asked to work 6 feet apart, which required our staff to re-think and re-sequence how we were performing the work. Our subcontractors were compelled to not allow sharing of tools, advised against carpooling, and restricted carpooling on the project sites. Shift work and location isolation measures were deployed to minimize close quarters work. Face coverings became a requirement, however more recently additional changes were made to combat new risks that presented themselves due to high heat and high humidity temperatures. Temperature check at the start of the day and at lunch break are mandatory so that they can monitor for symptoms. It has been a challenge to compel individuals to adjust their behaviors to curve the spread on the projects.

One jobsite uniquely affected by the shutdown was GTMO, which required that any person traveling onto the island needed to be placed in a mandatory 14 day quarantine. There were also a reduced number of available flights, creating difficulty for people needing to get on or off the island. But, there are probably worse places to be trapped during lockdown than a tropical island.

The last three months or so have brought about a world of change not only in how we work, but also in how we communicate. Being thrust into interacting, collaborating, and producing work in a new environment has been something that each and every department and project has sought to work through. It has certainly come with growing pains. At least 20% of our employees have been working from home almost exclusively. At first, I thought the restrictions wouldn’t last long and we’d back to business as usual in our office or on jobsites, but over these months, we’ve all begun to find our groove, seeing that the concept and reality of working from home is still very much a reality for many at RQ, whether out of necessity or choice. As our country, states, cities/towns, and neighborhoods begin to open (with safety precautions in place), I do look forward to seeing more of the RQ family in person and dare I say, give an elbow high -five to celebrate rolling with the punches and still coming out on top. Well done everyone!