The World Health Organisation (WHO) has declared the outbreak of COVID-19 a pandemic. To date, there have been more than 783, 360 reported cases of the disease in at least 206 countries. Our thoughts are with everyone affected by Covid-19, at JMAC we’re making decisions day by day based on the latest Government advice and, although the instructions for the construction industry have been vague, last week we made the decision to stop all work on non-critical sites to protect our teams and keep them safe.
This was a tough decision for us at JMAC, especially as we’re a family-run company, however, this is the time for us to protect our people.
Through these unprecedented times, one thing that echoed throughout the whole of JMAC is that we do not want Covid-19 to dominate our ability to be optimistic, positive and caring. With this in mind, we wanted to share with our community the steps we have taken to support our clients.
Our clients are at the heart of everything we do at JMAC, and we feel it is important to help protect the people who have played such a huge part in our story so far. Here are 3 ways we have supported our clients so far:
- We have terminated hire charges across all of our sites.
We value our relationships with our clients and we understand the great deal of pressure businesses are under in the current climate, which is why we feel it is only right to stop all hire charges across all sites.
A message from our MD Luis McCarthy “ Maintaining Relationships through communication is vital during this period, be it with our clients, employees or suppliers. At JMAC, we are different and like to always put things into perspective, there are a few companies in the industry that think profiteering during a shutdown is okay, with banks, mortgage lenders & local government all providing payment holidays, the very least we can do is follow suit to ensure we protect our clients and the relationships that take such a long time to build. Through compassion to help our fellow man we will come back stronger with those relationships intact.
We will continue to work in the background to ensure that the all the foundations we have built over the years will not only still be there on our return to work, but they will be stronger again through strategic development in key areas of our business and compassion to our fellow tradesmen in the construction and scaffolding industry.”
- We carried out Covid-19 closedown checklists across all of our sites.
We created a closedown checklist before we ceased work on each of our sites, this checklist was worked through by our supervisors alongside each site manager. The purpose was to ensure each client was happy our scaffolding was left in a safe and secure manner before our workers were no longer able to attend site.
A message from Kieren Cattanach, HSEQ Manager at JMAC Group, “The Covid-19 pandemic is such a shock to everybody in business, we’ve all had to react quite fast to prepare ourselves properly. Because our work is safety-critical, we created an emergency Covid-19 checklist on our new system, I auditor, so that our supervisors and managers could quickly and efficiently ensure they left sites safe and complying to the working at height regulations 2005. I would like to remind all people reading this to stay home, stay safe and save lives.”
- We’ve stayed consistent with our communication.
We’ve ensured we have communicated clearly to our clients at each stage of the Covid-19 process. Whether that’s through calls, emails or on social media posts, our standpoint has been clear and consistent. We have let all clients know we’re still here and free for a chat should anyone have any questions or issues. We’re also in the process of offering one to one business support to any clients who feel they could benefit from our assistance.
We hope everyone stays safe and well throughout this time, and we look forward to returning to working as normal as soon as the government advises that it is safe to do so. We also hope the rest of our industry, and other businesses in general, will follow our lead and do everything they can to support their clients and community throughout this challenging and testing time.
If anyone has any questions regarding this post, or the work that we do here at JMAC, please feel free to email us at sales@jmacsafetysystems.co.uk