Page 43 - BusinessWest March 3, 2021

Bradbury agreed. “Especially in this new year, 2021, there’s been a more positive outlook, and we’re starting
to have the phone ring more and see more potential jobs in the pipeline for this year and for next,” he said, adding that this sentiment applies, again, to construction in general and healthcare construction more specifically.
But there are still many question marks about just what the future will bring, and for this issue, we talked with these experts about what can and likely will happen, both short- and long-term.
Concrete Examples
Rewinding the tape on the past 12 months of COVID, those we spoke with echoed the sentiments of business owners and managers in every sector when they said the changing land- scape brought with it both challenges and opportunities, and certainly more of the former.
Indeed, some construction projects in the healthcare sector were put on
“When COVID first
hit, the hospitals were scrambling to get prepared for potential overflow — spikes and surges — and they wanted us to help them with that.”
the shelf because of the way the pan- demic impacted the client in question financially. Meanwhile, and especially in the beginning, it brought about some new work, as Pelletier explained.
“When COVID first hit, the hospitals were scrambling to get prepared for potential overflow — spikes and surges — and they wanted us to help them with that, whether it was installing plexiglass shields or building out exist- ing spaces in their facilities to house incoming patients,” he explained. “We had to work around the clock, and
it was a little nerve-wracking at first because no one was quite sure what COVID was and how dangerous it was — and they were asking us to send our guys out there not knowing exactly what they were getting into, and the crews had mixed feelings.”
Again, opportunities and challenges.
The challenges came in waves and in different forms, from meeting the many new regulations and protocols regarding when and how work can be done to handling new and different employee needs — from more sick time, if needed, to PPE, to working in settings that were often the front lines of the COVID crisis.
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