A recent webinar presented by the League of Champions served as a showcase of the latest construction-sector health and safety protocols practised by Ontario’s leading contractors.
At the same time, organizers noted, the event reflected the contractors’ eagerness to demonstrate they are capable of working safely once the sector gets back to full operation.
The webinar was held April 23 via Zoom and represented the League’s first public presentation as an incorporated body distinct from, but still supported by, the Ontario General Contractors Association (OGCA). Strong links remain — Craig Lesurf of Gillam Group chairs both the OGCA Safety Committee and the League of Champions steering committee and OGCA director of government relations David Frame remains a League administrator.
“The League is here to help you with our shared best practices,” said Dan Fleming, NORCAT’s GTA manager and host of the webinar, addressing the 85 or so online participants. “If we all work together we will all get through this together and everybody will be back working safely and productively.”
Frame mentioned a hoped-for timeline in his remarks to viewers.
“It’s our full hope in the next couple of weeks to have our construction sites up and operating. That means the demand on health and safety is going to be much greater,” he said.
Presentations by Michael Mancini of Matheson Constructors, Bruno Alves of Stuart Olson, Corey Lofft of Pomerleau, Craig Sparks of Maple Reinders and Sobi Ragunathan of 4S illustrated how in less than two months constructors have risen to the challenges created by the pandemic to create sophisticated new screening methods, training modules, language, tasks, staff positions, documents, software, website portals and an array of new worksite procedures.
The workday now starts before workers hit the jobsites, Mancini said, as all employees are asked to complete daily forms online based on Ontario’s new self-assessment tool. There is also verbal screening onsite before employees are allowed to start work.
LEAGUE OF CHAMPIONS SCREEN GRAB — As of April 27 Maple Reinders workers will be wearing non-medical buffs on jobsites, participants in a recent League of Champions webinar were told. The buffs are to be raised in such settings as washrooms, cafeterias, site trailers and other high-traffic spaces and also if the encroachment of physical distances is unavoidable.
Besides the obvious health and safety reasons, Mancini explained, the information helps with Ministry of Labour tracking requirements, creates a database for the company and instils confidence in workers that they are safe.
Matheson uses self-customized spreadsheets, charts and graphs created by Google and Microsoft.
“We have had no refusals so far,” he said of worker buy-in. “Everyone is understanding.”
Alves, speaking on physical distancing, explained how contractors are constantly seeking to identify the latest protocols and fitting them into existing requirements. For example, while the COVID-19 crisis is unprecedented, Ontario’s Occupational Health and Safety Act has always required employers to comply with standards limiting employee exposure to biological, chemical or physical agents.
Stuart Olson and others are implementing guidelines contained in the Canadian Standards Association’s Standardized Protocols for All Canadian Construction Sites.
Contractors should go through the established prevention hierarchy for jobsite hazards, Alves said, attempting elimination, substitution, engineering controls, administrative controls and personal protective equipment (PPE). The basic rule is, if distancing is not possible, use of PPE is ramped up.
Sparks of Maple Reinders discussed his firm’s decision to require thermal imaging as a condition of site access. Maple Reinders created a Specific Thermal Screening Procedure to implement the program, including consent forms, procedures for Thermal Scanning Areas, and designating and training operators.
Participants in the webinar noted there are varying legal opinions on thermal screening, with unions questioning whether workers’ rights are being violated. Sparks said Maple Reinders has not yet encountered resistance among its employees.
Lofft, speaking on dealing with subcontractors, said Pomerleau has created a spirit of collaboration with subs through its Committed Contractor Initiative (CCI). The program was created by the firm’s Emergency Response Team and is part of Pomerleau’s Pandemic Response Plan.
The CCI, he explained, includes standards and principles to be followed by everyone on a jobsite and is intended to ensure all contractors and trades onsite share in Pomerleau’s commitment to health and safety, “working together to protect each other.”
The response plan is being updated regularly, Lofft said, with the latest iteration delivered April 17.
The feedback from peers and trades to the measures has been highly positive, Lofft said. And, he added, “We have had multiple visits from authorities and no orders yet, thankfully.”
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
