By Mark Drury, Shapiro & Duncan

The current climate has brought innumerable departures from what ‘regular’ life looked like before. At Shapiro & Duncan, we’ve met these challenges with a proactive approach. This has been a crucial element enabling us to ‘keep our eye on the ball.”

First Things First – Throw Out the Old and Pivot

The first thing to acknowledge when facing the global pandemic is that life will no longer resemble what it did before. Change is inevitable, and in these current times coming faster than most of us would like, but this makes it more important than ever to embrace the new normal and pivot accordingly.

For us, the first thing we did was throw out our previously-developed 2020 strategic plan. Everything we had planned was built on assumptions and projections that no longer existed. Instead of wallowing in what could have been, we focused our efforts on pivoting to adapt to new circumstances and opportunities in order to set us up for success through these challenging times and beyond.

Double-Down on Core Strengths 

As part of our efforts to pivot as an organization, it was important for us to get back to the basics of who we are as an organization and a player in the mechanical contracting industry. At Shapiro & Duncan, we are a people-focused company, and as such, they took top priority in our plans and attention. 

We jumped right in and ensured our people felt protected and secure in their jobs, and as an organization, we decided right away to focus on ensuring people remained paid and working as we did not want to consider any layoffs. From there, we went into purchasing mode to acquire appropriate PPE and hand sanitizer to ensure our teams remained safe in the field.

Delineate Essential from Non-Essential 

From news outlets to state and local government officials, the distinction between what industries and types of work were deemed essential to continue and which were not has been a matter of opinion and debate. For us in the construction industry, while we were deemed essential and permitted to continue work, this designation also presented itself as both a blessing and a curse. A blessing in that our teams were able to continue to work, a curse in that we were saddled with the additional concerns associated with ensuring our team members remained safe and healthy. We made a number of tactical adjustments to this end, including adding field sinks and sanitation stations and adjusting work schedules for our trades teams, to be four 10-hour days vs. a typical 5 day work week, to reduce exposure risks by 20% on a weekly basis. The essential nature of our work also required us to critically examine the projects we continued to work on, to ensure our team members were not exposed unduly to less time-sensitive projects. To-date, this has seen us making a concerted shift to hospital and healthcare build-out projects, bringing additional patient care spaces online and leveraging our expertise to be part of the ongoing solution. 

Lead with Compassion 

Periods of challenge and adversity have a way of highlighting positive attributes we may not have noticed in easier times. As a company, our people are our best assets and the key drivers of our success. While we have long known this, the current environment brings a new determination to preserve the talented team members we have on our team through compassion, understanding, and support. As part of this, our focus continues to center on building our resource base of quality talent going forward.

Don’t Mourn the Past – Focus on New Opportunities Ahead

The ‘old ways’ of living and working are gone, permanently. The reality of this forces us to look to the future and assess our tools and expertise to determine where best to chart our future course. For our team, this means leveraging innovations in technology to improve our Pre-Fab shop and BIM capabilities, as well as expanding our 3D modeling expertise, potentially adding robotics for on-site welding in the longer term.

New opportunities are coming. Modular construction will be a continued trend. Office modification projects are inevitable once people go back to work, along with changes to HVAC systems in group settings. It is important to keep your eye on the prize, to face these new needs with confidence to thrive and grow in the future. 

About the Author 

Mark Drury is the Vice President of Business Development at Shapiro & Duncan. He brings more than 40 years of experience in construction management and oversees the company’s corporate development, contracts negotiation/management, and production of marketing and sales materials. Mark is a past Chairman of the Board of ABC Metro, is a LEED AP and Designated Design Build Professional. He completed his undergrad studies in History at Shepherd University and graduate coursework at Princeton and Clemson Universities. For more information about Shapiro & Duncan, please visit www.shapiroandduncan.com.