GANOTEC'S ONGOING COVID-19 RESPONSE

As the COVID-19 pandemic – and the responses by federal, state and provincial governments – rapidly evolve, Ganotec continues to make adjustments to its practices and policies to protect the health of our employees and those we work with at our projects and office locations, while continuing to provide essential construction services to our clients and the public.

Shortly after the COVID-19 outbreak occurred in China, we established a dedicated COVID-19 task force representing all parts of the company to begin reviewing and implementing actions to prepare for the inevitable impact on our company’s operations in North America and interactions globally. The following actions have been taken to help our company prepare for and actively manage this issue.

• First and foremost, we have worked closely with all employees, subcontractors, suppliers, owners and others to ensure that anyone who is ill or believes they have been exposed to COVID-19 refrain from entering our office and project locations. This includes, in some locations, requiring pre-and post-access health questions and pre-access and periodic temperature screening. We have also restricted visitor access to our office and project locations and continue to recommend that non-essential office personnel work from home.

• We developed protocols, procedures and best practices to ensure employees practice recommended social distancing (separation of 6 feet/2 meters or more), including protocols for transporting personnel on job sites, using busing/shuttles, driving/riding in company trucks, vans and buses and for working in office locations. On our project sites, we provide surgical masks and eye protection for specific operations that may require closer proximity to ensure the safety of personnel, and other hand and face-protection tools for daily operations. We are providing face masks to employees at office locations who want them.

• Employees are required to practice proper hygiene and have been provided hand sanitizer and other cleaning materials throughout each location for this purpose. We have also significantly increased communications, signage and oversight of personal hygiene requirements to drive better prevention practices.

• We established dedicated processes and personnel – trained to use detailed exposure intake questionnaires – to closely track all confirmed and presumptive positive COVID-19 cases, and implement strict cleaning, quarantine and return-to-work protocols. Any employees who are experiencing symptoms of COVID-19 or believe they have been exposed to COVID-19 are required to contact these personnel.

• We are fully engaged in active and ongoing monitoring of this issue, including disease progression, federal, state, provincial and local government actions, CDC and WHO responses, supplier and supply chain risks, and prevention and containment measures to maintain business operations. This includes ongoing communications with leading health experts and public officials.

• In addition to our existing site crisis management plans, our locations have expanded and implemented their pandemic response plans to ensure a consistent, comprehensive response to various COVID-19 scenarios. As part of these plans, site specific COVID-19 coordinators have been identified to ensure that company protocols are followed.

• With the guidance and direct involvement of leading industrial hygienists, we implemented more stringent office and project site cleaning and hygiene protocols in all locations and developed specific viral contamination protocols to address confirmed and presumptive COVID-19 exposures. We also developed more stringent tool, vehicle and equipment cleaning protocols. Disinfecting products are widely available throughout each location.

• For employees, we established a robust, regularly updated COVID-19 information hub with FAQs, important communications, regularly updated protocols, business planning tools, best practices, signage/flyers and other important resources. 

• Safety/toolbox training on the various provisions of the project COVID-19 pandemic plan takes place on project start-up and remobilization. Refresher training also takes place during the life of the project.

• We have imposed restrictions on social gatherings and large in-person meetings to maintain appropriate social distancing.

• We have limited company travel unless approved by executive leadership.

• We have significantly increased the use of company communication technologies that we already have in place.

We are taking all reasonable measures to mitigate the risk of COVID-19 to our team members, our clients and our business. The work we do is very important, even critical to sustaining the needs of society. As long as we can operate our projects safely and deliver high-quality work, we’ll continue to support our clients and the many people across North America that count on us.

Thank you for your continued support of our company. We wish good health and safety to all our business partners and their employees and families.