COVID-19 Statement from the Directors, 27th March 2020:
Since the very early onset of the COVID-19 pandemic we have been proactively implementing measures that would aid the national effort in preventing the spread of COVID-19 and support business continuity, that’s to say the continuity in our ability to serve our many great clients.
Following the Prime Minister’s address to the nation on Monday evening, we accelerated spread prevention and business continuity measures. All members of staff who can work from home are now doing so and all construction site personnel were stood down with effect from Tuesday 24th March. The few members of office staff who are unable to work from home have also been stood down.
This allowed us a few days to consider the desperate predicament the PM’s address left us in as a business, with many of the construction sites we operate on, both locally and nationally, remaining open.
Ultimately, we are not confident that the required social distancing and hygiene guidelines can be effectively applied or achieved on several of the construction sites that our workforce attends.
As such, with the health, safety and wellbeing of our fantastic team being of utmost importance, we have now taken the decision to extend the stand down and implement a temporary cessation of all construction site activities.
At this point in time, we cannot confirm how long this suspension will be in place, but it is anticipated to be for at least a 2-week period initially and will be kept under review.
Where we have operation and maintenance commitments that require our technicians and engineers to support power generation assets across the country, we will continue to provide our services. In these cases, it is imperative that the social distancing and hygiene guidelines can be followed.
We apologise to all clients who this decision might inconvenience but hope that our decision is understood and can be looked upon sympathetically. Whatever shape we’re in as a business come the end of this, we will be back to giving our all to you.
If you have any questions, concerns or otherwise, please get in touch with your usual point of contact in the first instance.
For now, ‘business as normal’ will carry a very different meaning.
We would like to record our thanks to those who have helped enable a significant number of our workforce to work from home, to the clients who have already shown understanding and support, to the employees who are all now working under such different norms, to our O&M teams who continue to provide critical support and, most importantly, to our entire workforce and their families for their considerable patience in these wholly unprecedented and worrying times.
Thank you.
Neil Smith | Keith Bennett | David Shawcross | Mark Skeels
