New time, new rules

A design and engineering firm adapted to social distancing. Here’s how

By: John A. Sartor

How dramatically and quickly we are witnessing – and managing – change in all industries today, and notably in the architecture and construction space.

There are two things so apparent today: the absolute necessity for regular communications with employees and clients, and an investment in technology that allows employees and clients to connect with each other virtually.

We at PS&S have been fortunate. The great majority of our employees and families have remained safe through this difficult period. And – quite fortuitously – two months ago our IT team worked to develop solutions that would allow our production teams to work remotely. Their efforts have paid off. Since “shelter in place” became mandated, we have had 100 percent of our production staff capable of operating safely from home. Although not ideal, this has allowed our company to provide clients with the excellent service they expect. In fact, one client has moved additional work to us because of our capability to act in an uninterrupted fashion.

In the last week, we conducted a survey of our critical designers who work every day with CAD, Revit or GIS. All these systems depend on the connectivity of their home machines to our servers. All these systems require regular collaboration of our teams to provide the integrated architecture and engineering design that is one of our unique qualities. The survey was designed to evaluate the performance of our technology and machines; our designers’ level of communication with their supervisors; and their level of communication with their teammates and clients. The results were promising — we will need to tweak some of our approach, but after only a couple of weeks of “virtual” operations, we were optimistic.

Safety teams have become an even more important part of daily life. Ensuring that our field personnel are maintaining social distancing, equipping our teams with necessary supplies and monitoring – then communicating to employees – the latest guidance from OSHA, is paramount. As this is changing day to day and week to week, we’ve had to maintain constant supervision.

Our protocol for field work at construction sites and other locations has been updated. Changes include:

• mandatory social distancing;

• confirmation that employees, vendors and clients have not had, or come into contact with, anyone who has tested positive for COVID-19, or experienced symptoms;

• avoiding any workspace, office or trailer occupied at a density of greater than 50 percent of design occupancy;

• more stringent personal hygiene and sanitation practices;

• use of disinfectant cleaning products for work surfaces, vehicle interiors, equipment, hand tools and writing implements;

• only using your own personal equipment and hand tools;

• no shared use of personal protection equipment.

As with all companies, our primary concern has been and will continue to be the safety of our workers and their families. Disruptions will happen, and we will manage them, but we will control, whenever possible, every safety procedure we can.

As professionals, we need to take a leadership role to help bring our communities back to a more productive state. We have the proper training and the discipline to live and work in an environment that now includes the threat of COVID-19. We have always been and will always be focused on the health, safety and welfare of our employees, our clients and our communities. I believe that we can do our part to flatten the curve and contribute to the return of New Jersey, New York and the entire metropolitan region, as well as our country, to a stronger post-pandemic society. This will be our new normal; whether it be a month, quarter or longer, we will need to follow proper protocols to maintain the safety of our work force and our communities.

Timing is everything. For the past eight months, while designing our new office in Warren, which we will occupy this summer, we have been developing a strategic IT plan to transform PS&S to an integrated cloud-based design platform. This plan envisioned moving to virtual collaboration; ideally, we could work as effectively across all offices as if we were located in one. Now, I’m not saying I would ever entirely replace “in person” meetings, but our productivity and quality control should not be solely dependent on it. I commonly use the analogy of my middle school son and his friends that get together at least every weekend in a virtual environment to compete in sports games or drive cars either against each other or with each other. My vision would be to offer a similar experience to our design teams and our clients, and I believe the most recent graduates to join our team are ready to excel in this environment. Now, having spent the past two weeks dependent on Virtual collaboration, I know we will be successful. So, when we are all back together (after more time being apart, then even more time phasing back to full operation) I think implementation of our new strategy will be well received.

As stated earlier, it is apparent that, in this new environment, communication has become vital. So I have asked our team – instead of a text message or an email, to call their colleagues. We can’t replicate the camaraderie of the office environment virtually, but phone calls and conversation are so much more personal and important right now than text messages and emails.

Managing conference calls efficiently has also become extremely important. We challenged our Future Leadership Team to develop a virtual meeting protocol that we implemented at the end of March. We have become dependent on these virtual meetings being a primary source of client and collaborative communications. In addition, we have an obligation to maintain our professional standards through this period which require “virtual” quality assurance and quality control of our documents. Using advanced technology and new protocols, this has actually been easier than anticipated.

Continuing to build company culture in a new environment will also need change. Although we plan to maintain our high standards of integrity, quality and professionalism, we also plan to keep it social. So, we are adding more social interaction to our everyday life with a Virtual Lifestyles Program to compensate for the loss of the in-person interaction. The program will provide our employees a platform to share their daily experiences of dealing with the new stresses that none of us have ever experienced.

In many ways, going through this will help us appreciate each other a bit more and will make us stronger once this is behind us.

I am truly proud of how quickly we as a company and industry have come together and responded to this new challenge. As we look back at our learnings from Superstorm Sandy, remote access and connectivity was a key. Fortunately, it has helped us right now. I have always envisioned our profession moving to a more virtual environment where our designers are collaborating remotely; we have been moving our company towards this for many years and we are stronger for having embraced technology and pushing our multiple generations of employees to recognize its value.

And finally – some of our employees volunteer in their communities as EMTs, firefighters, coaches and other roles so vital in our lives. Let’s make sure we value their contributions more than ever. They have never been so important and deserve our gratitude every day.