A New Normal for Construction: Essential Workforce

On March 16, San Francisco’s Mayor London Breed declared a state of emergency and issued a corresponding “shelter-in-place” order for the city. This declaration quickly expanded to neighboring counties, including Alameda, Contract Costa, Marin, Santa Clara, and San Mateo.

On March 19, Governor Gavin Newsom declared a “stay-at-home” order on March, extending similar orders, which limits the moment of people around the entire state, which effectively just fall short of an entire state-mandated lockdown.

Now, nearly 30 days later, small and medium-sized businesses across all industries of work are forced to find new normals and discover creative ways to operate under the pressures of an immensely fast-spreading Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. At the same time, California’s citizens find themselves trying to adjust to a climate with heightened fear, anxiety, and lack of access to basic goods.

Our business has experienced similar difficulties — whether it’s staggering laborer work schedules, expecting and accounting for material delivery delays, or finding new materials distributors to take the place of closed businesses.

What This Means for Your ADU Project

Bay Modular falls under the category of “essential workforce” based on our work in housing construction. As a result, all existing ADU construction can and will continue to proceed forward while we continue to watch for changes and mandates from local and state governments.

However, given the public health circumstances, it is not business as usual for us. During this time, we are taking every precaution to keep our team and our customers safe and contact-free. Here are a few of the many adjustments we are forced to take in the wake of COVID-19:

• requiring that any worker that feels sick notify us and not report to work

• limiting module construction to a single worker per day, mandating a thorough cleaning at end of shift

• staggering trades to meet the requirements of single-worker construction areas

• spacing under-construction modules apart by at least 20 feet

• canceling trips to big box hardware stores in favor of site deliveries for materials that are available for delivery

• requiring the use of PPE - masks & gloves - when entering stores

On the business side:

• we are continuing to be very supportive of customers that are experiencing financial hardships and honoring requests to extend construction timeline or complete pauses

• we are not starting construction on any new projects, but will continue to onboard new customer inquiries with over-email and over-the-phone support to prepare for the time when the shelter order is lifted

  • our support services at this time includes: model selections, customizations, and all the necessary steps to finalize plans for permit issuance

• on a county-by-county basis, planning offices are still operating, with 75% still accepting ADU applications online including those in the Bay Area, if you have a question regarding your specific location, please contact our support team via chat

  • some regions in CA are more strict, so do not assume permitting will continue as usual

Benefits of Prefab During Shelter-in-Place

At this time, we are more grateful than ever that our work is done predominantly off-site in a factory. Operating off-site allows our workers to report to a single-location factory that we are able to monitor, disinfect, and quarantine should we find the need to.

Not only is our facility safer for our essential workers by nature, it also prevents the free flow of people in and out and prevents contact with customers until a unit is delivered. This also limits the amount of worker vehicles that are parked in neighborhoods and public streets that crowd streets where neighborhood cars are effectively parked indefinitely under the shelter order and removes construction noise for people that are working from home.

• safe, secure central working location

• limited neighborhood impact, reduced to delivery-only days

• no parking congestion from worker vehicles, not taking parking from people living in dense neighborhoods

• no construction noise from on-site construction, not disturbing people who are working at home

What’s Next

Although our business pace is certainly impacted by shelter-in-place, we are thankful for all the work our local and state governments, healthcare workers, grocery store workers, restaurants and food delivery workers, and essential workforce people in total are doing to keep everyone safe and healthy during this unprecedented time.

While it is uncertain exactly when and how we the order will be lifted, we are doing our part in making the construction of your ADU more predictable and are thankful that our construction methods were built for times like this.