Vancouver-based home builder New Tradition Homes restarted construction on 45 homes in the greater Clark County area today, and 20 more in the Tri-Cities. Gov. Jay Inslee announced a plan on Friday to allow current construction projects to be completed under strict guidelines to reduce exposure to the coronavirus. Home builders and commercial contractors are clamoring to get back on the job.
New Tradition’s leadership worked through the weekend to identify qualifying projects and to create and post the required comprehensive COVID-19 exposure control, mitigation and recovery plans at each site. On Monday, a few sites opened under the new protocols – soft start, but Wednesday brought a “hard-start” with all qualifying sites under construction, said New Tradition Homes Quality Assurance Manager Caleb Blanton.
In addition to the state requirements for qualifying projects, which include social distancing, protective equipment, safety trainings, sanitation protocols, worker and visitor logs and more, New Tradition has developed its own protocols for further safety and simplicity of work.
The state mandates that a site-specific COVID-19 supervisor must be at every job site to monitor the health of employees and enforce the COVID-19 job site safety plan. The supervisor must be present at all times during construction activities, except on single-family residential job sites with six or fewer people on the site.
Builders (also known as site superintendents or supervisors) are responsible for making sure that sites are following the strict protocols. Ultimately, however, New Tradition Homes considers it “our responsibility that our sites are in compliance,”said Blanton. NT management will be driving around, paying onsite visits.
New Tradition is limiting crews to six people, eliminating the need for a site specific COVID-19 supervisor by decreasing the risk of contact and transmission. New Tradition is also limiting each site to one trade partner per day, whether that contractor needs two hours or 10.
While respirator masks have always been protective equipment in construction, there are not enough to go around because they are being prioritized for medical providers. A staff member in New Tradition’s office was making them for her family, and she offered to – and followed through on – sewing masks for all crew members as well.
Each New Tradition site features the required wash stations and posted protocols. The job sites have changed in other ways as well. Because workers are not allowed to carpool, there will tend to be many more cars on an individual site, while numbers of workers are greatly decreased. Blanton said each home will likely take two-to-three weeks longer to complete and initially builders will be losing money on each project. In the long term, prices are likely to rise.
The majority of homes under construction are in the Northeast 162nd corridor of East Vancouver, and the second highest concentration of homes are in Ridgefield, then La Center. New Tradition has 11 active home sites in Clark County and seven more in the Tri-Cities area.
