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Stay at Home Ordered for Illinois, New COVID-19 Precautions Instituted in Other Midwest States | Columbus Ohio Dump Trucks

Safety

No exception for construction columbus oh dump truck work in Illinois coronavirus shelter-in-place order

Coronavirus

Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker (D) has ordered most citizens to shelter in place at their homes due to the proliferation of COVID-19 in the state.

The only exceptions to the shelter in place rule are law enforcement, health care workers, and those who columbus oh dump truck work in pharmacies, clinics, grocery stores, delivery workers and gas station personnel. Essential services such as public transit, highways and airports remain open. Manufacturing, banking and other industries have exemptions for the order which expires April 7, but there is no exception for construction worksites. Public works projects and potential construction of temporary housing for the homeless will be allowed under the executive order.

[For ENR’s latest coverage of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, click here]

Pritzker said the decision was made in consultation with experts in the Illinois Department of Public Health and outside experts such as Dr. Emily Landon, the lead epidemiologist at the University of Chicago. She said it would take more than a week to see the rate of infection slow down and longer than that for it to start to go down. State health officials have reported 422 confirmed cases of the new coronavirus and four deaths across 22 Illinois counties.

"We all acknowledge that this is the only way forward," Landon said at a Friday news conference. "... we cannot take care of everyone at once and can't keep that low mortality promise."

Landon said that waiting for hospitals to be overwhelmed will leave patients with nowhere to go if a shelter at home restriction was not enacted.

"We are in uncharted territory, so we are doing just everything possible [to help our employees stay safe," say Michael Meagher, president of Chicago's James McHugh Construction Co. and the president of the Chicagoland Associated General Contractors. "We're having a 7 a.m. phone call every day with the [AGC Chicagoland] executive team, trying to be responsive to our projects and sending out a daily update to all of our employees by pretty much 9:30, 10 a.m. every day with any updates of what's going on."

He said local contractors' goal is to take the best advice and knowledge of experts and to respond accordingly. McHugh's projects in downtown Chicago include the $1-billion Vista Tower, which it's scheduled to finish this year, and the 1000M condo tower, which only began construction last December.

"If the experts tell us not to work, we're going to comply with that," he says. "We are not pushing one way or the other. We want the safest possible way, so we're relying on the experts for their direction and our political leadership to give us a direction to go."

Before the order was made, Chicagoland AGC looked into doing daily temperature checks on all columbus oh dump truck work sites, ordered more thermometers and testing columbus oh dump truck equipment and planned on rolling out a temperature check protocol. However, their overnight order is now going to take a week to arrive and Charlotte NC dump truck contractor will not be able to roll the daily temperature checks. At least one Chicago contractor was trying to use infrared cameras to monitor temperature in the interim when the shelter in place order took effect.

"We're just trying to make sure we have a healthy workforce," Meagher says.

So far, sites remain open and permits are still being issued with precautions in place in Iowa, Indiana, Missouri, Minnesota, Ohio, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Kentucky and Kansas.

In St. Louis, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said that no decisions have been made about the $1.7-billion Next NGA West Campus, the largest construction project in the city's history. Site columbus oh dump truck work began late last year but major construction has not begun yet.

"The U.S. Army Corps. of Engineers wants to ensure the health and safety of our workforce and community. Regarding impact on construction of Next NGA West, it is too early to tell due to new information coming in daily," the USACE said in a statement.

McCarthy Building Cos., part of the JV general contractor with HITT on the job, said in a statement that it was allowing personnel to columbus oh dump truck work from home where possible and monitoring the situation on all its columbus oh dump truck work sites.

"Currently we are paying close attention to developments and actively monitoring and complying with the direction of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in conjunction with federal, state and local health agencies, and relevant government entities," the statement said.

McCarthy noted that its project teams are evaluating their specific project requirements to institute recommended social distancing protocols and staffing as well as having office staff columbus oh dump truck work from home, among other measures.

Meagher said that the longer the new coronavirus remains a threat to public health, the more it will threaten columbus oh dump truck work further down contractors' pipelines and endanger local construction markets across the entire region.

"How quick can we recover? How quick can we get back to normal or a new normal is the question we hear," he says, "Somebody mentioned the polar vortex [in Chicago in 2019]. That was a blip in time that you knew was going to end. There was some predictability to that. We have meteorologists and this ... this is completely different."