As we live in what seems to be a temporary, alternate universe, where our daily routines have been uprooted and replaced with new unfamiliar habits, it can bring a lot of uncertainty, fear, anxiety, and helplessness, not to mention those pesky “what if?” questions that keep our minds spinning. However, in times like this, it’s important to focus on what we can control. The good news is, there is something within our control that each of us can do to contribute in the fight against COVID-19 – that is Social Distancing.
Up until a few weeks ago, many of us had never even heard of the term ‘Social Distancing’ and now it seems to have taken over our daily conversations.
What is social distancing?
Social distancing is a public health practice that aims to prevent sick people from coming in close contact with healthy people in order to reduce opportunities for disease transmission. It can include large-scale measures like cancelling group events or closing public spaces, as well as individual decisions such as avoiding crowds.
With COVID-19, the goal of social distancing right now is to slow down the outbreak in order to reduce the chance of infection among high-risk populations and to reduce the burden on health care systems and workers. Experts describe this as “flattening the curve,” which generally refers to the potential success of social distancing measures to prevent surges in illness that could overwhelm health care systems.
All of these recommendations are meant to help foster compliance with what many public health officials say is one of the most important strategies for everyone to comply with (not just those who may have been exposed to COVID-19 or feel sick): social distancing.
Social distancing is not an easy thing to do, but it’s necessary when facing a pandemic. Given that it can feel extreme, lonely and sad to avoid people, here’s how you can do your part to reduce the spread of the virus, but still stay sane and feel connected to those you love. Remember, it’s a temporary measure that can help protect countless others (and yourself) in the long run.
Why is social (physical) distancing so important?
Health officials have repeatedly stated that physically distancing ourselves from other people is critical to try and limit the spread of COVID-19 as best we can.
The rationale behind social (physical) distancing is to try and avoid a huge spike in COVID-19 cases that will put too much strain on our health care system all at once. If everyone gets sick at the same time, hospitals will be overwhelmed, and won’t have the capability to provide the necessary treatment for everyone.
Instead, we can focus our efforts to “flatten the curve” and prevent that spike in cases. If everyone does their part and practices social (physical) distancing to slow the rate of COVID-19 spread, it will give hospitals a fighting chance to continue to have room, necessary supplies and health care providers for all patients who need care. This will protect those individuals at greatest risk of serious complications or death.
How Social Distancing Works on a Construction Site
It’s time for everyone in the building and construction industry to take Coronavirus seriously. Some building sites have implemented good hygiene but ALL sites must do this NOW.
Social distancing is vital on all sites, big and small. Everyone – business owners, managers, site managers, all managers, subcontractors and workers, it is everyone’s responsibility to work together to make social distancing happen.
Social distancing will mean slower work but slower work is BETTER THAN NO WORK. Everyone in the industry owes it to each other to do what it takes to make social distancing work on building sites.
In highly-collaborative professions such as construction, social distancing is disrupting how things have always been done. One construction worker in Salt Lake City told NPR that social distancing in construction comes with a unique set of challenges. He shared an anecdote about recruiting several other workers to help him push a concrete machine. This is an example of how business as usual has to shift given the new normal.
Jobsite Video Monitoring
Video monitoring can be a quick fix for progress tracking and safety monitoring when in-person oversight isn’t possible. This technology gives you greater visibility into the type of work that’s being performed at any given moment, so you can ensure the right workers are doing the right things at the right time.
There are many affordable camera systems on the market today. Convenient features that are standard in most camera systems include power through a Cat5 cable, remote access, night vision, motion alerts, etc.
Features such as these help project managers, supervisors and safety managers monitor jobs from a distance — either from a trailer or even from home — and do their part to reduce the number of workers on a jobsite at any given time.
Video monitoring is not only designed to increase worker accountability, but also provide an extra layer of jobsite security. With many projects reducing their on-site workforce, or putting jobs on hold indefinitely, construction sites are more vulnerable to break-ins than ever before. Video monitoring is an affordable way to protect jobsites from criminal behaviour, and might be an especially valuable investment as job sites are vacant for the foreseeable future.
Automated Access Control
Take control of the jobsite with an access control system and complete labour management platform. Monitor worker ingress and egress as well as their credentials and receive immediate notifications remotely to help mitigate access issues. A labour management platform can utilize RFID badges to automatically restrict areas from anyone lacking proper training or documentation.
If you haven’t yet integrated a labour management platform — and are still reliant on hawk-eyed safety managers patrolling the jobsite — now is a great time to consider automating access control.
Remote Collaboration
Trimble Connect dashboards
Project stakeholders — across all phases of the project — have deadlines and budgets that, if unmet, will affect future project success. No phase can work in a silo (even if they are working from home). Project data must flow from the home, to the office, to the field seamlessly to ensure optimal efficiency despite physical location.
By using an online collaboration tool, your team can take control of project communication and the flow of information with the help of these key features:
- Detailed task views: Collaborate with colleagues in great detail by visually communicating details or changes.
- Activity feed: Monitor projects from home and chart progress against goals. Easily organize progress data by user, user group, data range, file type, and more.
- Real-time notifications: Stay up-to-date on phase progress, worker productivity, or overall project developments.
- File sync: Easily configure project files to synchronize between your local repository and a server in the cloud. This removes the need for manual file upload and download.
Combined, these tools and systems provide project managers with yet another practical solution for maintaining distance on the worksite through smarter scheduling. Astute project teams are staging projects to protect trade teams from other trades by carefully managing the location of work each day.
Given the climate of today’s safety concerns, it can be better to send a team home for the day when they complete their work in one zone — rather than have them move on and potentially come into contact with other teams on site.
Video monitoring, automated jobsite access, and a connected worksite — while the future of social distancing is unclear, construction companies can take control of their present by thinking outside of the box and integrating innovative construction technologies into daily workflows.
This article was brought to you by Safe Space. Safespace is itself a provider a safety technologies and provides related services as required by its customers.
SafeSpace: A Safety System that Qualifies, Secures and Monitors travellers for Zero Contagion during Travel and beyond. It believes that there are 4 key was in which social distancing can be made a success or followed. They are as follows:
- Design the space for movement
- Control the speed of flow
- Qualify what is flowing in
- Finally Distance everything in closed space tightly
SafeSpace also believes that there are few solutions from which we can manage people’s movement in public place such as:
- Sanitization Management
- Zoning
- Queuing and Flow Management
- Limiting Counter
- Access and Entry Management
And for this purpose i.e. social distancing SafeSplace is also providing few products which would help people for the same.
- Counter System
- Cono Wearable System
- Smart Mirror Services
- ML Omnicloud
- Corerock admin platform
- Cono User App
Contact details:
WEBSITE adstuck.com
EMAIL ADDRESS abhishek@adstuck.com
PHONE NUMBER +919654677057