As a member of the ASA Houston Chapter Board of Directors, I was honored to work on the above short video: Essential: A Tribute to Construction Working Through COVID. Adams Insurance along with Andrews Myers, PC sponsored the video presented at this year's ASA Excellence in Construction Awards.
The video is only 5 minutes. Please take a moment to watch it and reflect on the job the men and women of the construction industry have done over the last 11 months and think about where we would be without them.
In addition, here are a few musings from the "director" about some things we learned from working with the folks featured in the video.
We knew from the outset that we wanted to offer tribute to the frontline construction worker that is actually putting the work in place. None of these men and women had the option of working from home during the pandemic. We asked ASA-HC members from various trades to let us interview members of their workforce to memorialize the experience of working through COVID pandemic. It was a pleasure to interview this diverse group of men and women from different backgrounds, different trades, and, indeed, different generations. What they shared was inspiring and made us proud to serve and be associated with the construction industry. Specifically, they ALL demonstrated courage, a can-do spirit, and the care of a craftsman.
Courage
Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is doing the job or overcoming the obstacle in spite of the fear. COVID was a serious concern from the start. Some of our interviewees had lost close family members to COVID. They described driving through empty streets to get to jobsites and some experienced outbreaks that closed jobsites or reduced the number of workers on the site. They all worked through these risks. All of them were proud that their team, their company, and their industry rose to the challenge and finished the jobs in spite of the pandemic - justifiably so.
Can-Do Spirit
None of these folks would take "no" for an answer. It was never even a question whether the jobs were going to be finished--only what were the additional controls and protective measures needed to get it done safely and on time. This kind of attitude is infectious (the good kind) as trades worked around each other toward a common goal, but with safeguards in place to reduce the risk. The same thing was happening at home as working families had to deal with remote learning from a home environment that was not meant for it. It was not perfect nor enjoyable for those families. Yet, they found a way to work through it and get the job done at home and at the jobsite.
Care of the Craftsman
There was no nonchalance on display about the jobs these men and women do. They were proud of the work they completed in spite of all the difficulties and challenges. Our jobsite visits demonstrated that same professionalism. To the extent they were concerned or annoyed by the PPE they wore to combat COVID, it was only because it made it harder to do their job--through hot masks and fogged safety glasses.
We came away from our interviews and jobsite visits excited to tell the story of these workers putting the work in place through COVID. It was difficult to cut the interviews into a video that fit our short time constraints. We hope that the video captured the above attributes on display by all of these workers. We hope that the video memorializes their commitment and triumph for posterity. Thanks to ASA Houston Chapter for giving us the green light and Adams Insurance and Andrews Myers for sponsoring the video!
