written by
Lore De Jonge

Measures for the coming four weeks in Belgium

3 min read

Dear colleagues,

As announced in our communication on Sunday, we met this Monday to determine our approach for the coming four weeks after the various announcements of this weekend by federal and regional authorities.

Those announcements combine safety and well-being on one hand and business, activity and services continuity on the other. Keeping our project sites up and running in these difficult times is essential to the economic viability of our company and of the construction sector in Belgium. Functions operating at (head) offices in support of project sites are essential in the same way.

We have put in place for the past months various organizational and sanitary measures to fully comply with our legal and societal duties. We have also learned from the first wave how to maintain business, activity and services continuity, including as to teleworking as a way to contribute to this continuity.

We are therefore making some adjustments to how we work together for the four coming weeks, starting tomorrow. In a nutshell, we shall ensure the continuity by being efficient & effective, whatever the way of working, by teleworking or otherwise. Above all, we want to remove stress and support your long-term safety and well-being.

Working on project sites and at the office

  • Team leaders are invited to consider implementing a rotation-system to ensure business continuity, based for instance on a weekly 50% presence on site or at the office. Every team leader is empowered to review this system according to his/her team’s specificities, as long as his/her team can efficiently and proactively support the operations.
  • Team leaders will have to be flexible to coach both teams at the same time (those working from home, those working from the office), in a result-oriented way.

Meetings on project sites and at the offices

  • Essential meetings can take place in-person, respecting the maximum allowed number of people in the meeting room and provided masks are worn at all time. Other meetings can be held in Teams (or combination of in-person and Teams).
  • In-person meetings within construction site offices must take place in well-ventilated rooms, or even better in the outside. Managers are empowered to set up such an outside corner to make it efficient and workable (small stove, open tent…).
  • For essential in-person meetings, external visitors are allowed, provided they are informed upfront of our mandatory measures and comply with them: control of body temperature, hands disinfection, mandatory mask during meeting, distancing in meeting room.
  • Reminder: large meeting rooms with adequate social distancing are available at the BESIX Academy in Diegem.

Applying protective measures on project sites and at the offices

  • All existing protective measures must be enforced at all times and will be further controlled.
  • Reminder: large stocks of masks are available for order at the BESIX storehouse of Leeuw-Saint-Pierre. Additional, proactive shipments of masks will be sent to the project sites this week.
  • Head (offices) are continuously checked to welcome employees in a safe environment. We have implemented hand gel dispensers everywhere, circulation patterns, lunch shifts to maintain social distance, mandatory mask wearing, hourly disinfection of buttons and handles, air conditioning bringing fresh air from outside, no recycled air circulating in the vents, etc.
  • The track-and-trace procedure managed by the People & QHSE department is functioning and has already proved effective in many circumstances by cutting short chains of potential contaminations. Keep them in the loop (covid.helpdesk@besix.com) should you be Covid-positive.

These are the adjusted measures we believe are necessary to support your health and livelihood, so that we can continue to work, provide our operation teams with the support they need, and the clients with the service they rely on.

We’re in this together and here to help however we can. Your department heads are there to support you to get the rotation system implemented. Don’t hesitate to reach out.

The Executive Committee of BESIX Group