FEATURE
“With all of the new rules and regulations that were being introduced, contractors
didn’t have anything in place that met those requirements. No one did.”
– Allan Goldstone, Heavy Construction Safety Association of Saskatchewan
“One thing this pandemic has taught us is that we should be looking at
all the course material that we have and trying to decide what can actually
go online,” said Goldstone. “This has forced us to embrace technology.
“We’ve never used a Zoom platform before. We had Microsoft Teams,
but we’ve never really used it. It has helped us immensely because we’re still
able to communicate and collaborate as an association when we’re working
on a template.”
Whether these new measures are temporary or become the new normal
remains to be seen. Both Barilla and Goldstone and other contractors are
taking the wait-and-see approach. Nonetheless, these alternative means of
doing business certainly are better than no business.
“We felt we had to find a way to help the contractors,” said Goldstone.
“If we could find a way to do things safely for ourselves and for the contractors,
then we were going to do it. We made the decision to move forward
and turn this pandemic into a somewhat normal situation.”
“We’ve been doing this for just over a month now and this has kind of
become our new norm,” Barilla added. “We don’t even think about it anymore.
We just do it. Habits have changed a little.”
PHOTOS COURTESY OF ALLAN BARILLA
thinkbigmagazine.ca | Quarter 3 2020 | Think BIG 17
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