By Janis L. Magin
 – Senior Editor, Pacific Business News

When Covid-19 began shutting down businesses in Hawaii in late March, Mike Formby brought members of the construction industry together to pledge for each contractor and trade union to implement best safety practices at job sites around the state.

It was a pivot for Formby, executive director of the Pacific Resource Partnership, a consortium of the Hawaii Regional Council of Carpenters and more than 240 of the state’s unionized carpenters, who had spent the beginning of the year focused on policy at the Legislature.

There were a number of projects underway and more in the pipeline, so 2020 was looking to be a fairly good year, he told Pacific Business News.

Then the coronavirus came to Hawaii, and in late March, Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell, then Gov. David Ige, issued stay-at-home orders to all but essential businesses such as construction. Caldwell called out construction during his announcement, saying it is one of the industries that will help Hawaii recover from a Covid-induced recession.

Formby teamed with Cheryl Wathall, executive vice president of the General Contractors Association, to tell the contractors and unions working on projects about the best practices being put out by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

That led in early April to a pledge signed by more than 150 general contractors, developers, engineering firms, trade unions and other business and industry associations such as the Building Industry Association of Hawaii and the Chamber of Commerce Hawaii.

Walthall previously told PBN that it was “pretty unprecedented for the construction industry to all agree and stand together on an issue.

“The purpose of that was to show that we could self-regulate and self-police in a changing environment, and do that by adopting CDC and OSHA guidelines and regulations to assure the governor and the mayors that they made the right decision in allowing construction to be an exempt essential business and operation to continue to work,” Formby said. “And then, protect not only the contractors and the workers but protect the community because we didn’t want clusters coming out of our job sites.”

When Covid-19 began shutting down businesses in Hawaii in late March, Mike Formby brought members of the construction industry together to pledge for each contractor and trade union to implement best safety practices at job sites around the state.The pledge outlines such steps for construction sites as personal responsibility and screening, social distancing, hand washing, limiting the number of workers on elevators and hoists and communication. Some contractors are taking workers’ temperatures and having them complete health surveys before they enter the job site, where they have installed such safety measures as additional sinks and plexiglass dividers at lunch tables and in areas where more than one worker is needed to complete a task.

“We always took being designated as an essential operation as a positive thing not to take for granted,” Formby said.

“The industry has been focused on trying to follow the rules.”

Once the safety issues were taken care of, Formby and others began to shift gears to try and assess the amount of work the industry has right now and on the books.

While Formby told PBN that the industry was optimistic coming off the fourth quarter of last year, Nathaniel Kinney, executive director of the Hawaii Construction Alliance, said the industry was already expecting a downturn.

The organization is an alliance of the 6,100-member Hawaii Regional Council of Carpenters, the Operative Plasterers’ and Cement Masons’ Union, Local 630; International Union of Bricklayers & Allie Craftworkers, Local 1; the Laborers’ International Union of North America, Local 368; and the Operating Engineers, Local Union No. 3.

“The peak was in early 2017 so we’re already trending downward,” Kinney said. “We were preparing earlier this year and late last year for the eventual downturn.”

Kinney said the short-term outlook looks good, with projects such as Brookfield Properties’ Lilia Waikiki, Prospac Holdings’ Azure Ala Moana, SamKoo’s The Central Ala Moana, JL Capital’s Sky Ala Moana and The Howard Hughes Corp.’s Aalii and Koula in full swing.

Only one major project, so far, has been put on hold — Hilton Grand Vacations’ 32-story, 191-unit time-share tower on the site of the former King’s Village shopping center in Waikiki, about a block from the Brookfield project.

When Covid-19 began shutting down businesses in Hawaii in late March, Mike Formby brought members of the construction industry together to pledge for each contractor and trade union to implement best safety practices at job sites around the state.

But homebuilders such as D.R. Horton — Schuler Division are also still working, and Kinney noted that housing is one of the biggest drivers of construction. “The demand is still there because supply has been so choked,” he said. Kinney said the state and county governments can keep the industry working with capital-improvement and infrastructure projects, but also noted that government definitions of “shovel-ready” projects don’t always translate to immediate work. “The nature of the government contracts, design-bid-build, means that it’s going to take a while,” Kinney said, noting that the “most important shovel-ready project in the state of Hawaii now is the third phase of rail. “This is the new normal, when we talk about projects, another great shovel-ready project is the [Thirty Meter Telescope], now that we’re not having all these tourism dollars coming in,” he said. Both Kinney and Formby said it’s an opportune time for workers displaced from other industries by layoffs and furloughs to learn new skills and join construction. “We were always recruiting,” Formby said. “I look at it as maybe there’s an opportunity for new technologies that allow us to continue to work in ways that are efficient and safe. “ Formby, who was previously director of transportation for the state and the City and County of Honolulu, said that applies across industries. “But to sit back and not start looking at new methods and new technologies would be unfortunate,” he said. “Now’s the time to do that — and I think construction is one of those prime markets you can do that in.” Kinney noted that people displaced from the tourism industry could find work in construction now and return to tourism once visitors start coming back. “The only way we’re going to get out of this is we’ve got to build our way out of this,” he said.

Link to article: https://www.bizjournals.com/pacific/news/2020/05/22/hawaii-construction-keeps-workers-on-job-covid.html?iana=hpmvp_lulu_news_headlineEDIT