Lesson Learned – COVID and the Commercial Construction Site with Jason Beam - Part 1

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the world in many ways over the last two years. From our homes to our workplaces, and everywhere in between, we have all faced challenges that require us to live, work, and think just a little bit differently. In this two-part episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, I speak with Jason Beam, Director of EHS and Risk Management of CCB, INC in Westbrook Maine, about how he and his team have worked with employers and employees alike to maintain and encourage safe working habits and guidelines in the face of a global pandemic. Peter Koch: [00:00:04] Hello listeners and welcome to the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast. I'm your host, Peter Koch. I expect that we are all if I can use COVID as a verb just a bit COVID-ed out these days. It's been a long road where most of the news has been challenging. So I want to hear more about the successes and where companies have persevered throughout the pandemic. In this episode, I get my wish. Jason Beam, director of Environmental, Health and Safety and Risk Management for CCB, comes to the MEMIC studio to talk about the challenges that CCB faced operating a commercial construction company with the geographically diverse projects throughout the pandemic and the lessons that they will carry forward. We cover topics from emergency management to leadership to basic communication practices. There is enough complexity to the conversation that we broke this out into two episodes. So let me introduce Jason and get going with part one. Jason [00:01:00] Beam, director of EHS and risk management at CCB, has over 25 years of health, safety and emergency services experience. He earned his Master's of Science Degree in Occupational Health and Safety at Columbia Southern University and currently serves as the Enterprise and Risk Management Chairman for the Pine Tree Council of the Boy Scouts of America. Jason is also a principal member of NFPA Technical Committee 704 On the Standard System for the Identification of the Hazards of Materials for Emergency Response, has written multiple articles for the International Society of Fire Service Instructors and has previously served as an advisory board member of the American Society of Safety Professionals Fire Protection Practice Specialty. Jason, welcome to the podcast. Jason Beam: [00:01:49] Thanks for having me. Peter Koch: [00:01:49] Awesome. So I want to learn a little bit more about you even having some conversations here off the podcast prior to. But before we jump into CCB, you have a pretty interesting [00:02:00] history and have quite a bit of experience doing environmental health and safety and working with different organizations. So before we get to CCB, why don't you give me a little bit of history about how you got into health and safety and, well, how you ended up at CCB to begin with, I guess. Jason Beam: [00:02:17] Sure, sure. I think we can shorten that up a little bit. You know, originally it was an I.T. guy. My degrees in I.T. writing code. We had an I.T Shop with about seven people and we were all police officers, firefighters, hazmat, and one of our clients at the time power plant, Biddeford said, Hey, we have a fire brigade. Would you come? Would you take on some additional training? So we took on the additional training and then that grew to filling in for their safety director when he was incapacitated, to becoming his replacement, to moving to their parent company and hitting a bunch of different types of work environments around the country. And [00:03:00] then when we finally get tired, the way the family and I get tired of being in me being in a hotel five or six nights a week, said, all right, it's time for change. First day back home eating lunch. I get a call from the at the time safety director for CCB is what are you doing right now. Well, Having a sandwich, Bob? Yeah, no, I mean right now. No, I'm having a sandwich. Yeah, no I am. It's. Well, when can you be here? I'm like, Well, where's here, Bob? So, you know, we said, Hey, come on in. I need some part time support. And I got somebody out on a medical and I could really use your help. So he eventually opened his own consulting business and vacated that post. And I was asked to stay on there and have been there ever since. Peter Koch: [00:03:43] Interesting history. I can't tell you how many people that I've talked to that have found success at a particular company with health and safety, that they started in a completely different world. Jason Beam: [00:03:57] It's more common than it seems. Yeah. Peter Koch: [00:04:00] So [00:04:00] interestingly enough, like if I look at my journey to get to where I am as a safety consultant for MEMIC, as an insurance company, and I started as a basically as a ski bum. My goal was to run a ski area at some point in time. And I spent a lot of time, you know, working in all the different aspects of the ski industry and had different opportunities to manage risk and safety without actually being charged with managing risk and safety for a particular company. And then moving, getting an opportunity to, hey, why don't you take this on? Hey, why don't you take that on? Hey, here's some information about this. And I remember one day I was sitting in my office and the guy who was in charge of construction and development at the ski area came into my office. I had just gotten the job as risk manager and he said, I've got to have I have this thing that's going to really help you. And I'm like, Oh, great, because I felt completely out of my element. I really wasn't sure what I was getting into at that point in time. So I'll be right back. And he goes [00:05:00] out to his truck and he comes back in. He. Brings in three boxes. Like these are for you. Great. Thanks. Thanks for that. What's in them? Oh, just you'll, these will be good for you. So they were the code of Federal Regulations for OSHA, for construction, general industry, maritime. What was the. I don't know. So lots of books, lots of small print. Like, how is this going to help? But here I am thinking about it and that connection between the human person that I had to deal with all the time from a in the trenches, working with some particular individual all the time to the regulations and that connection between how to manage people and make sure that they are safe so that they can go home at the end of the day. And, you know, I think that's a big part of what you're doing at CCB and what's making CCB safety history fairly successful over the years. Jason Beam: [00:05:58] Yeah, I would agree with that. We've [00:06:00] put a heavy emphasis on people before production. Yeah, it's about the people. If we're not taking care of the people, then we're not executing work at a high level out in the field. Peter Koch: [00:06:12] Let's talk about the human side of this and let's bring this into the COVID world. So if we if we think about it, when COVID first came out, right, there were there was a lot of confusion, you know, 2019, 2020, as we're starting to hear all this stuff about COVID and how it's transmitted and what it does and how it affects people and who it affects and how fast it travels. There is a lot of information out there. No one really understood what it was and where it goes. And now we're in 2022. And there's still a lot of confusing information out there. Things have evolved as we've moved forward. So, you know, what are some of the things that you did early on in COVID to help keep your staff safe? [00:07:00] That may have changed as time went on. As we come into the present, like how did you start and then how did you get to where you are now with your COVID regs. Jason Beam: [00:07:09] Early on was kind of kind of a two pronged approach, right? There's the business continuity piece. You know, if we don't keep the business afloat, we don't have jobs, we're not putting food on our tables. But there's the people side of it, too. There was a tremendous amount of fear and uncertainty. Right. I mean, even among the experts. Right. You know, we had all these different organizations professing to know the ins and outs of this. Yet there were contradictions, there were loopholes, they were gaps. And we had a group of people that were just nervous and they didn't know what direction to face. We really set out quickly to establish this this cadence of constant communication, effective communication. We consolidated it all into a single point. You know, folks were pretty much home at that time, even though in construction we were considered essential workers because of our government work. But we [00:08:00] kept the senior and executive management right there at 65 Bradley Drive and, you know, kind of war room time, so to speak. You know, what do we have to do to meet our contractual obligations, what we have to do to keep our people safe? And how do we you know, probably the biggest challenge bigger than either of those other two things was how do we how do we get them engaged and being part of the solution? How do we show them that we were not just trying to make a buck, they were there to take care of them. And we kind of had to build on kind of our philosophy of people first. We had to change how we did it. And it took a lot of individual campaigning with some folks, took a lot of group discussions, visiting job sites, a lot of one off conversations with folks just to set them at ease. And part of it was, is a safety and health department. We want folks in CCB to be able to feel they can call us on their worst day and get some sort of support. And obviously, if down deep, you know, you need 911, then call 911. But short of that, [00:09:00] we want one of the first ones. You feel comfortable enough to reach out to us for anything. And we took advantage of the good faith we had built doing that and said, look, together, we're going to get through this somehow. You know, we'll keep you up to date. We'll, you know, kind of work with our partners whether it's MEMIC our legal folks whatever to boil this down into what's the right thing. Because above all else, we got to do the right thing here. So a lot of it was communication at first. A lot of it was you know, we had a everybody at home for a little bit. How can we continue to engage folks or work working at home or some that were out of work at home? Because the nature of what was going on to help us kind of build out our solution. Peter Koch: [00:09:48] Can I can I stop you for a second? Because I think that's a that's an important point to explore a little bit more, because you're not we're not just talking about ten or 15 or 20 or 30 people [00:10:00] in a small construction organization, CCB, relatively large when you think about a commercial organization, not a global thousands and thousands of employees organization, but it's a problem of scale. If I have five employees. You have to do the same thing that I have to do in order to make those employees or help those employees feel safe. Trust me, and make sure that they know that I'm there for them as a business owner. But as the scale gets bigger and you have more employees, you get more job sites. How did you deal with some of those problems of scale? I guess you could say? Jason Beam: [00:10:38] Certainly. Certainly complicated things. You know, we're about 130, 540 people average annually. And then we have a number of subs. We work with close relationships with vendors, customers, all that. But we're so far distributed. We can have 40 concurrent job sites, maybe four concurrent job sites, you [00:11:00] know, down into Mass., up to Houlton, Maine. It's certainly, certainly muddied the waters and being in a union environment while we have a lot of core people that stay with us, you know, there's quite often, depending on what's coming down the line for jobs, quite often an influx and an influx of people that may or may not know anything about our culture or what's important to us. Different levels of skill. I mean, we've seen people that have never seen so many people that are absolutely new to the trades so that complicated it even further. So during the initial quarantine, it was pretty easy. We, you know, we set up shop right there at 65 Bradley and just started communicating, communicating, communicating while in the meantime, we're hatching out these solutions to keep the jobs going. But once things opened up again, senior executive management president, myself, vice president and the operations manager and we hit the road, we're going to job sites, we're [00:12:00] never able to abate all the uncertainty and fear. Jason Beam: [00:12:03] I mean, it's just not feasible. But we're able to address a greater degree of it by getting out to the job sites, meeting with the crews, first with the foreman. You know, hey, here's where the company stands on this. And we need to know what you need for assistance. And then what we're going to do next is we as a leadership body are going to meet with the guys, you know, doing the iron work, doing the pipe fitting, doing the carpentry so we can help put them at ease, too, because you're their first line of defense and offense. You're going to come to you looking for support, come to you with questions. We need to arm you with enough information to be able to at least know which direction to point. So. You know, communicating with that level of field leadership and not necessarily making them subject matter experts, but making them comfortable being able to answer questions. Added a great deal to that. Peter Koch: [00:12:57] Do you mind me asking? Because I find that [00:13:00] this can be a challenging part when your upper echelon meets your middle team and you get given information from the upper echelon as the middle manager, and then you're asked, do you understand that? The answer is typically yes, I do. Whether you always understand it, believe it or not. So how did you make sure that they were on board that they. Because, again, we started talking about the information that's out there. And there is I won't call it misinformation. There's just a lot of different information. And depending on where you get your news from and what you believed, then you may come at it from a completely different side than what your company was coming at it from. So when you're hearing something that might be very different. How did you how did you help that person truly understand what the message and what you wanted [00:14:00] them to know? Jason Beam: [00:14:04] There was a couple of pieces to that. One is we have the I'll call it the fortune of some very open viewpoints in construction. Peter Koch: [00:14:12] That's a very good way of putting that. Jason Beam: [00:14:15] You know, I'm sure you're aware a lot of trades folks are not bashful about expressing their opinions and their concerns. So they were quick to say, you know, I, I think this is crazy. This is insane. You know, I don't understand yet. There are going to be some that just go with it. I'll call it refreshing after the fact, the number of them that that said, you know, no, no, no, man. What gives, you know, explain this. So that was an advantage. Know, we certainly engage with the business agents and stuff at the union halls to leverage that resource as well. We engage with you folks. Help us tell that story, you know, with clerk insurance. Help us tell that story because a, you know, sometimes the [00:15:00] same message from a different voice may be phrased a little differently from a different perspective. Add some clarity. You know, there's one particular conversation that stands out where one of the foreman says, I don't like Chris. We were subject to, you know, staring down the barrel of that federal contractor mandate where vaccination or you punish them or you fire them, get them to comply. And there were folks with real concerns about that. Sure. You know, some were philosophical, some were religious. Some were mistrust of the government some were fear of vaccinations. I mean, they were pretty open about that. And the way we framed it up was, look, as leaders, we're here for the people and we have to be here for the people. And whether we agree with the government mandate or not, we have an obligation to you to keep you gainfully employed if we possibly can. So [00:16:00] we could sit here and be upset and say, you know, saber rattling, we're not going to do it, or we can do everything in our power to enable you to make the choices you need to stay with us. Jason Beam: [00:16:11] We don't want to get rid of anybody. We'll do what we have to do to stay in business for whatever set of rules, you know, whether it's OSHA, the government contracts thing or whatever. But, you know, we get it. You know, it's uncertain. It's unnerving. And for a lot it's aggravating, you know, and we'll get through that. But. We got to have a consistent face to the men. And that was a challenge too, because we all have different beliefs. Some were. I don't mean to sarcastic, but card carrying members for the cause. Others were 180 degrees different, you know, very opposed to it. But I think what carried us through a lot of it was the that faith we built up amongst our people. [00:17:00] CCB has always been a company that that invests heavily in that relationship. And I think we kind of built up that we had some credibility in the bank and like what you and I were talking earlier. Peter Koch: [00:17:12] Sure. Jason Beam: [00:17:12] Yeah. And I think we made some pretty big withdrawals from that that were certainly challenged by the constant changing of the rules of engagement because, well, jeez, you told us this, now it's this, now it's something else, you know, where does this end? Well, we don't know yet either. So I, I think probably, you know, thinking back on, one of the things that had the greatest impact was we were able to take advantage of the good faith, the credibility of the trust we had built previously, kind of in the face of so much change. Peter Koch: [00:17:47] Yeah. And I do want to come back to that to make sure we talk about that more because I really believe, as we talked at the beginning prior to jumping into the podcast, that that is an essential theme that has to happen. If you are going [00:18:00] to if you're going to manage change in your organization correctly or properly or successfully, if you ever just want to stay stagnant, then you don't really need the trust bank because you can always find someone to fill in the gap that that someone else just left. But if you want to grow, if you want to get better, if you want to if you want to be the best company that you can be, you have to have that. So we'll get back to that. I like that theme. So let's talk a little bit more about the specifics around like when all the protocols came down about you have to mask or you have to quarantine and you have to stay six feet apart. And how did you manage that with a commercial construction site? Like how did you got you had said you could have 40 construction sites, you could have four sites. You could have a site up in Houlton or Fort Kent, Maine, or you could all be all the way down in Massachusetts. So people have to travel. People have to be overnight, different places. How did you manage all of the what were the protocols [00:19:00] that worked? How did you implement some of those protocols and how did you manage compliance? I guess those three questions for you. Jason Beam: [00:19:08] Yeah, some of the easiest ones were managing the lodging. Fine. It's one person per room. Instead of bunking up together, limiting travel and vehicles together certainly had an impact financially, but we needed to keep people available to do what needed to be done. That was probably the easiest piece. There were definitely some challenges there. It made us focus a bunch on how we lay out our work, how we stage our tradespeople instead of three people working side by side. Well, how do we rearrange kind of the work area to accommodate that? How do we how do we arrange different trades or subcontractors, you know, things that you might look back at, say, lean construction concepts, right. You know, every purposeful [00:20:00] motion, right. Every action has a defined purpose or do we really need it? It made us kind of reach back into that toolbox a little bit more than we had been, which was good, because it also created some refinements in our production process too. Right? Because I do think the same things that that lead to safe behaviors are also the same behaviors that produce top notch production, have the most engaged employees and so on. So I think it's all part of the same thing. So we're able to kind of reach into that toolbox and juggle things up. But some of it too is we eat an amount of our work is outdoors. That helped, especially when the state turned around, when Governor Mills said, well, you know, we're not as worried about outdoor activities. Perfect. However, you got to guys 60 feet off the ground in a man basket together, they're not six feet apart. You know, a it's hard to observe half a dozen different lifts in the air with everything else going on. And are they aren't they messed up, you know. Well, but the state says we don't have [00:21:00] to anymore. Okay. You know, I get that. So we had some challenges there. And of course, you know, if I'm building a steel structure and then I'm putting siding on it and a roof on it, and then I'm working inside at some time. At some point the outdoors becomes the indoors. And that was always a healthy debate too. Peter Koch: [00:21:19] Yeah, when does when do we cross that line? Like how many walls have to be up for it to be considered indoors? Jason Beam: [00:21:26] Yeah. And there were some healthy discussions around that and they're still ongoing. You know, I think some of what helped it though, is. A lot of our clients have their own sets of rules, and some are extremely stringent and very much exceed the current CDC recommendations. Others not so much. In other places, we were the stringent one. Of course, there again, you do that. And how come we're holding ourselves to a different standard than everybody else in the job site because it's the right thing to do. And again, I think that that credibility we built up, most, most everybody went, [00:22:00] all right, fine, I get it. We'll make it work. Peter Koch: [00:22:03] Did you find in those spirited discussions, did you find that those are happening more frequently or happen more frequently because of the challenges around COVID than they did pre-COVID, like when you might have had some conflict around a particular job site or a particular set of instructions that might have been understood one way and then really implemented a different way. Were there more spirited conversations during COVID than might have been in the past? Jason Beam: [00:22:35] I think they were different. You know, suddenly we have this new set of rules of engagement. Peter Koch: [00:22:41] Sure. Jason Beam: [00:22:42] Right. Some have penalties, some don't. But here's the expectation. And you're all going to do it. You know, that became a pretty good set of measurements to gauge things by. So it was I think it was easier to be able to sit there and not wave those around, but say, look, you know, bottom line is we have to do this. And if we don't do [00:23:00] this, it jeopardizes our ability to complete the work because people are people are getting sick. We're not caring for them properly. And if we can't do that well, now we have financial problems because we're not completing our contracts on time. I think it took some of the fire out of the work process discussions, but it certainly stoked the discussions relating to the two mandates. Peter Koch: [00:23:24] Let's take a quick break now. MEMIC policyholders get lots of free, convenient tools and solutions to overcome everyday ergonomic challenges in any work environment. MEMIC's E Ergo program has proven to help prevent injury. By analyzing your work process through pictures you send into our ergonomics team within 48 hours will begin to identify your risk factors and provide solutions. And now, using cutting edge video analysis, MEMIC can assess your manual material handling risks as they unfold without [00:24:00] stopping production. Ergo, just one of the signature programs from MEMIC that keeps workers safe, prevents costly injuries, and helps companies stay productive. Start the E Ergo process today by logging into the safety director at WWW./memic.com/WorkplaceSafety. Now let's get back to today's episode. Peter Koch: [00:24:26] What I found in all of this is the companies that have found success in those spirited conversations, like in the moment, they can be pretty challenging. But when you reflect back on when you got to live in that tension for a little while between one, one opinion of the individual and then the mandate that the company is trying to put together when you live in that tension for a while, come to a realization and then move forward. That's a that's a pretty powerful opportunity. If you can recognize [00:25:00] the recognize in the moment that you could have success. So stick with that conversation. Make sure you're recognizing what concerns the individuals bringing to you and try to address those concerns as best you can. Where in the past, sometimes the way it was addressed was this is the rule. It doesn't matter what you think. You need to you need to follow the rule. Jason Beam: [00:25:24] And for us, this wasn't we didn't want it to be one of those times. You know, we had our own philosophical position on some of these mandates and, you know, from the from the get go. So, look, we want people to be safe. We want you to we as a company are going to subscribe to CDC recommendations. People are looking for some sort of direction. Great. We're going to start here. And as we have to change and veer from what the CDC says, we will where it makes sense to. But these are the rules of engagement we're going to follow. And then along come these mandates. Well, our belief about what was right or wrong didn't [00:26:00] change. Yeah. So, you know, we're very open about our rules have changed in order to maintain this customer base with the federal contractor piece. And it's a very big part of our business, and we can't afford not to have that. And we still want you to take care of yourself. We still want you to not come to work when you're sick. We still think the right thing to do is get vaccinated and now boosted. But short of anybody telling us you have to, that's a decision for you to make. And we're not here to pass some sort of health policy on our folks or it's certainly not how dictate they and their families manage their health. So that was a tough spot to be in. But I think our position kind of between those two endpoints helped a bit because yeah, when somebody's sitting there, you know, I'm vaccinated, I'm for me, pretty painless process, but I can certainly understand the fear of that form. And I was mentioning earlier saying, you know, look, I'm not comfortable [00:27:00] with some of these things where the government's telling me that I need some medical treatment. He says, you know, I just I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I'm just not comfortable with this, you know, help me through this. So I think our kind of position between the two end points really kind of helped aid what you what you're aiming at here. Peter Koch: [00:27:19] And that's huge for that foreman to come to you with the challenge and look for you to partner for a solution to help him through that is enormous. That doesn't happen all the time and again going back to that invested in that trust bank for quite a while. And then that time, here is the time where you have to go and make a withdrawal to maybe make a change in what is going to happen on the job site that will affect individuals. But that individual to be comfortable enough to come to you and say, I don't know what to think. Right? Here's my challenge. Help me through this. Help me understand this. Where do I go? What do I do? And [00:28:00] ultimately, it's their choice. It's not your choice. It's their choice. But to for you to be there as a company, as part of that senior team, to look and say, all right, yeah, I can help you through that, or I can provide you with some resources. Or we can here's some ways that you can you can go out and look for information on your own and then come back if you have questions, let's talk about it. Jason Beam: [00:28:22] Yeah, you know what really strained that was when with regard to that federal contract and subcontractor mandate, they said, well, hey, here's how you're going to implement this. The people that will not comply, you need to enter them into your progressive discipline policy and apply as much pressure as it takes to get them to do it. We're sitting there going, that's not our role here. Right. And kind of announcing and rolling out that, okay, this is where we're at here. Certainly strained those relationships. But I but honestly, in all fairness, it was, you know, the field [00:29:00] leadership that turned around and got control of that. They're the ones that get their arms around all the tradespeople and said, hold on, hold on. You know, you do understand who we're dealing with here, right? You know, they care about us. They're interested in our success. And they're the ones that that helped really control that narrative, that, look, it's not CCB saying, if you don't do this, we're going to fire you. It's they're put in a position where they have to make some tough business decisions. Peter Koch: [00:29:26] Yeah. And if they don't, then the whole point is moot because we're not involved in the federal contract anymore. Jason Beam: [00:29:34] And that's a big enough portion of the book of business. So that's a pretty crippling thing. Of course then the legs get taken out from under that. Now the piece descends on us and you know where we're at with that. But you know, then how do you manage a, you know, for those that say, great, I don't have to get vaccinated, then how do you manage a testing program across that many sites? So yeah, it's been interesting. Peter Koch: [00:29:57] So can I ask you that question? How do you manage [00:30:00] a testing program across that many sites? Because I think that's a question that a lot of people have even over one site that's been a bigger that's been a bigger challenge than I think OSHA had initially thought, because it seems pretty easy. Yeah, go ahead. If you're not going to get vaccinated, then weekly tests. But if you if you take a quarter of the people that you have at 130, you're you know, you're looking at a substantial chunk of people that have to get tested every week. How do you how do you do that when you've got job sites over seven, 800 square miles? Jason Beam: [00:30:35] Yeah, it's the concept was very challenging. You know, ultimately now that the legs have been taken out from under the OSHA executive order sorry, the OSHA ETS, it changed our opportunities a little bit. You know, prior to that, we're looking at all right, we have a group up at several people up in Houlton, Maine. We have people down in Massachusetts. Even though we're 70 plus percent vaccinated, [00:31:00] there's still pockets of people that aren't. You know, there are some work environments where we can take some alternative approaches. Peter Koch: [00:31:08] Sure. Jason Beam: [00:31:08] But when you've got, say, you know, a bunch of people from up north that have no interest in being vaccinated, but you have to be protective of their data. You have to deal with the lack of testing opportunities. Oh, by the way, home tests either have to be administered or observed by the company. You know, logistically, how do you do that? And now you have you couple that with, you know, a union construction environment where even though we have some longer term jobs, we have a lot of short term jobs. And it's a matter of moving the chess pieces around for the best advantage for the company. So now you've got to track, well, where was everybody Friday? Where do we intend them to be Monday? And how much of Monday are we going to consume getting testing accomplished for these people? You know, we started asking questions like, all right, if it has to be observed or one solution is observed by a medical professional. How [00:32:00] do we feel about the people that have doctors, nurses, paramedics, whatever in the family? Paramedic has a medical license of sorts. Does that count? So we talked about that a bit. We looked at how we could leverage in a world of everything, zoom. Could we leverage that? But that created new challenges, too. Now you're tying up health and safety people for a good chunk of whatever day you pick. You know, great. I need your ten or 15 minutes. I need your 15 minutes. They're scheduling all these slots now. You know, trying to catch everybody has a major impact on the workflow, certainly complicated from a privacy perspective to go that route. And let's face it, just wasn't feasible to send everybody to all to send a bunch of people out to all these job sites to administer tests. Peter Koch: [00:32:49] No, definitely not. Jason Beam: [00:32:50] So. Honestly, we never came up with a great solution. We still have places that we need testing. You know, you got to have a test, negative [00:33:00] test within so many hours of going to the site. Well, those places have been doing it all along. So we're able to. Peter Koch: [00:33:07] Maintain. Jason Beam: [00:33:07] To handle those. You know, we have other job sites like over here at Maine Medical Center work in that expansion where, you know, our partnership with Turner, it gives those folks on that job site access to testing. So we're meeting the clients needs. Well, they're helping us accomplish that by really providing us the solution to. So as it is today, you take availability of tests out of it, which is complicated for everybody right now. Yeah, it's not horrible. But under the ETS scenario, I'm not sure would have been able to it would have taken us a couple of iterations to get it right. Yeah. Peter Koch: [00:33:46] And I think what I'm hearing in all of this is that it couldn't have been done even in its even the testing as it stands right now outside of the ETS. It couldn't have been done without some [00:34:00] commitment and planning. By the company. And it's not just one person, but this has to be a conversations that happen because it affects everybody. Like if you expect if you expect the environmental health and safety person at your company to manage all of the requirements around testing and with no help anyplace else, and they decide that, okay, I'm going to do the observations. Well, that person's no longer available for anybody else to come in and say, Hey, Jim, I need this. Hey, Jason, I need this. Hey, Pete, I need this. Depending on who they are and what's going on, they're not available to have that question anymore, so. Jason Beam: [00:34:41] Oh, absolutely. That was a big concern because a lot of what our team we have a we're in a tremendously good position. I think, you know, we don't have the biggest of companies, but we have a health and safety department of a risk department, all told of six people, including HR for that, you know, that ratio of tradespeople to [00:35:00] risk managers is phenomenal. Peter Koch: [00:35:02] It is. Jason Beam: [00:35:03] And, you know, we enjoyed the conversations where, hey, I'm going to hatch out a fall protection plan. Hey, what's the here's what I'm thinking. But would you come out and make sure that I'm not crazy here, you know, to be involved in in all phases of that project lifecycle from hey, let's talk about how we think we want to bid this through to let's triage this what went right? What went wrong? You know, over the years, CCB has really pulled that whole risk function into all facets of that, that project lifecycle. And to me, that's where we're making the most difference. So, you know, to take up minimally 40% of my time previously, I mean, early on, it was 100% of my time. But to carve that out, to be able to track vaccination status exposures, to contact tracing, you know, and to add the testing component to that. And now you're taking two people offline [00:36:00] and you're having that much less effect in the field. How much riskier is what we're doing at that point? Sure. Not that the folks that are out there doing it are competent. I mean, nine times out of ten, they say, hey, we were thinking of doing it this way. There's maybe a couple of adjustments we might make. By and large, they know. They know they're professionals, they're good at it. But sometimes just that reassurance or being able to troubleshoot something together comes up with a better solution. And to sacrifice that to meet a mandate was kind of scary. Peter Koch: [00:36:32] Yeah. Yeah, I can I can imagine. And I keep thinking of sort of that domino theory and how things fall apart, right? So if you're not available and you're not there to catch that 1% this one time that you need an adjustment with for the plan that they because they couldn't come to you. And that mistake gets captured and ingrained in the process for the next project. Now it becomes not just 1%, [00:37:00] but it's now 10% and it might be 20% the next time that it happens. And it becomes a bigger and bigger problem. And all of a sudden when you get back into it, they've been doing it this way forever and all of a sudden you have to make a much bigger change instead of a small part that doesn't really change the operation, but you're pointing them in a different direction early on. Like it's much easier to change in the design phase than it is to remodel something to make it great. Jason Beam: [00:37:25] Absolutely like a compass. The difference between true north and magnetic north. If I'm a few degrees off and I'm ten feet down the trail, that's an easy adjustment. But if I'm 100 miles, that's a pretty big gap. Peter Koch: [00:37:36] Yeah, I missed the McDonald's completely. Jason Beam: [00:37:38] Right. But, you know, you add to that the fear and uncertainty that comes with COVID, the conviction of people for and against the government's position. And all of these you know, all these other components of supply chain disruption, both at work and at home. Peter Koch: [00:37:56] Yeah, Jason Beam: [00:37:57] You add all those distractions into it [00:38:00] and it magnified outcomes, typically magnified negative outcomes. You know, we have all these new stressors, new distractions that we're trying to figure out. Well, there's only so much margin here. There's only so much bandwidth to observe what's going on around us. And for a good portion of that bandwidth is consumed with new problems and uncertainties. What are we missing? We're missing more than we did before this whole thing started. So, you know, there was definitely a focus on trying to trying to keep that in people's minds, to keep people vigilant for those things. But ultimately, it's a bit of a losing battle because you're fighting human nature. Peter Koch: [00:38:42] True. Jason Beam: [00:38:43] I mean, we got through it so far. Peter Koch: [00:38:46] So far. Right. Knock on wood. Right. Right. So let's I'm not going to switch gears totally, but I want to go back to. So your history. You said you started out as an IT guy. So how did you use how [00:39:00] did you find technology helping you to manage some of the challenges on the job site for COVID, like whether it's contact tracing or any of the check and stuff, because again, disparate locations, disparate groups and, you know, a robust staff of safety people. But if you've got 40 job sites, six people can't make it to those 40 job sites if they're spread out all over New England. Jason Beam: [00:39:25] A couple of different things. One of the things we instituted early on, we'd had a biweekly safety and ops call, you know, all the field leadership and anybody that wants to honestly jumps in and here's kind of here's the tale of the tape. Here's how we're performing on both fronts. Here's what's coming down the line. Here's what we've been on. Here's what we've been awarded. You know, be more inclusive with our information, right? We immediately out of the gate said, you know, this is going to be weekly and early on it's going to be COVID driven, you know, because people need to know. We need to know where we stand. They need to know what we expect and so on. Certainly, [00:40:00] you know, go to meeting Zoom, Teams, things like that made that piece easier because we're able to reach anybody that that chose to participate on all job sites. Yeah. Because of the Internet. You know, I have a phone and I have signal I can participate in that call on the vaccination tracking piece. Really? I can send if I can put a QR code on a job box and I need your vaccination status, I need to know that you're fully vaccinated because we're staring down the barrel of the executive order, 14042, blah, blah, blah. You know, I can get anybody. That doesn't have a flip phone. To scan that QR code. Are you vaccinated? Yes or no? If you're not, do you intend to be? Yes or no? Because we've got a plan in case this thing comes to fruition. And great. Then share that information with us and we tracks it. And of course, there's the questions about what about information, privacy and everything else. There's rules that govern that. [00:41:00] Right. And if we're following those rules, we're in good shape. And it's not that isn't a complex problem. The hard part was getting people to do it. Even the people that said, no, I'm not getting vaccinated. You know, I'm not doing it. I'll work someplace else if I have to. But I'm not doing it because I still get you to share the information with us. You know, I promise we're not going to sell it. Ultimately, we got the majority of it that helped a great deal. And to be able to provide, you know, executive management, the operations management with kind of a snapshot as to what percentage of our people are currently vaccinated, what aren't, because, you know, in the middle of that, you got a bunch of government job sites, some existing contracts. Those provisions weren't in effect yet. Some new contracts. They were. So you're you know, by the way, there's health care and education and all these other places with their own rules. You know, which pieces can I move where? So making that information available to them was big. And then we were looking at, [00:42:00] you know, if we had to follow through under the ETS with, with the testing piece, I, the only way we could even conceive of being able to accomplish that was to leverage things like Zoom the video piece. Would it have worked? Yeah, I think it would have with a couple of iterations, you know, I think it was more about would have been more about difficulties with the process, not the technology. Peter Koch: [00:42:23] And I think a lot of people would actually add one more part into that from a difficulty, which would be the trust part. And then going back to that, that's a pretty big withdrawal when you're asking someone to give you their medical status, to give you their this particular status, to tell your employer something. And if you haven't built some trust up before then, even when you give them information about this is we're promising that we're not going to do anything with this. We're complying with this regulation. We need to do this. This is the process. If you hadn't built the trust, they're not going to believe you. [00:43:00] And so they'll be even more challenged with given that or if they do give it, they're going to give it in a very distrustful way. And that starts to break down your productivity and your quality and your safety and the people part of what makes your business run. Jason Beam: [00:43:17] Oh for sure. You know, we were. You know, I talked earlier about the idea that we want people to feel that they can call us on their worst day. Peter Koch: [00:43:27] Yeah, Jason Beam: [00:43:28] Right. Short of 911. Right. But that kind of showed through. I mean, it kind of demonstrated that we're hitting our mark, I guess, in that regard with the trust. You know, folks would start say, listen, I've got a family member, my mom, my dad, my son, my daughter. I have a wife who's got immune issues. You know, what do you recommend? Well, we're not physicians here. We're not going to pretend to be. But we can tell you how we read the guidance and we'll do our best to help you through it to the point where. Christmas [00:44:00] Eve and Christmas Day. You know, a couple of folks had had some exposures. One was family related, and he'd say, I'm really sorry to bother you, but I don't know who else to reach out to. Right. You know, my doctor's office isn't open. Would you mind giving me your thoughts on this? You know, and they went through the scenario and, you know, afterwards I was talking with my family about it. Pretty big compliment there in that regard that that somebody in their own time worried about the health of one of their loved ones reached out to us based on the connection we've made with them throughout this. It was definitely an indicator that we were hitting the mark with some folks. Which certainly led to more probing discussions with people. And even some of the folks that are typically grumpier than others. You know, we're like, Yeah, no, we think you're doing the right thing. I'm not going to sit here and brag about it. So you don't either. But yeah, [00:45:00] we trust you. So again, I think so much of what we're able to accomplish was because of all the work we did and building the culture prior to the pandemic. Honestly. Peter Koch: [00:45:11] Yeah. And to we talk often with some of our policyholders about that culture survey, taking the survey, taking the temperature of what's going on in the workplace. And obviously for us, it's always a safety culture survey. You're always, I'm always looking at it from the safety perspective. But from your perspective, when you heard that or realized what they were asking you on that Christmas Eve, Christmas Day question, you went back and tried to see if this is really what the perception of the rest of the company is like. How are what's the barometer? I mean, that out of the blue, that's an awesome pat on the back and a humbling compliment to think that someone would think that much of the of the relationship that you built with them to trust you for [00:46:00] an opinion. But how does that, is that pervasive through the rest of the group? And to re-ask that question to not just rest on that laurel and think, yeah, we're doing it, great, move forward. But to actually go back and recheck the pulse, I guess. Jason Beam: [00:46:14] Yeah. And humbling for sure. I mean, that's absolutely you know, it wasn't a 100% success. Of course not. You know, and I don't think it ever will be. Peter Koch: [00:46:24] It's human. Jason Beam: [00:46:25] Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But I think we're able to capture a larger percentage of people because a you know, we understand that you can't control human nature. Right. I can't I can make assumptions about how you might react to something. But I don't know what's affecting you or your mood today. I don't know what's motivating you in any given day. So we tried to incorporate a little bit of that uncertainty in there to kind of putting a heavy emphasis on that based on our belief that this fear and uncertainty is really [00:47:00] eating away at people. So how do we not take advantage of that? But how do we how do we put that on a pedestal so that we're it's obvious that we're trying to take care of our people? Peter Koch: [00:47:11] Let's stop right here with part one of my conversation with Jason Beam, director of Environmental, Health, Safety and Risk Management for CCB right here in Westbrook, Maine. In part two, we will continue with Jason around lessons learned managing COVID 19 on a commercial construction site. So be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you get notice when part two drops. The MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast is written, hosted and produced by me, Peter Koch, with production and coordination assistance from Rod Stanley. If you'd like to hear more about a particular topic on our podcast, email me at [email protected]. Also check out our show notes at MEMIC.com/Podcast where you can find additional information and our entire podcast archive. So while you're there, sign up for our Safety [00:48:00] Net blog so that you never miss any of our articles and safety news updates. And if you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate it if you took a minute or two to review us on Spotify, iTunes, or whichever podcast service that you found us on. And if you've already done that, then thanks, because it really helps us spread the word. Please consider sharing this show with a business associate friend or a family member who you think will get something out of it. And as always, thank you for the continued support. And until next time, this is Peter Koch reminding you that listening to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast is good, but using what you learned here is even better.