Episode 7: 'Building the New Normal'
Active Training Team kick off Season 2 of their podcast with a special 2-part mini-pod feature that asks the question ‘what now?’ Recorded and produced remotely during coronavirus lockdown in late April 2020, ATT wonder what will be different for the world post pandemic.
COVID-19 has exerted a tight grip on the world. We have been thrown into a surreal environment that we could never previously have imagined in our or even our children’s lifetimes. It has left many feeling lost, vulnerable, frightened, alone and grief-stricken. Yes, we’re all in this together – but it’s likely that post-pandemic, our work and our personal lives will in some ways be changed for good. So what will that look like?
Focusing on construction, and particularly the much-debated HS2 project, ATT’s Adam Christopher speaks with Lee Davies, Costain’s Key Accounts Director for HS2 and member of the Joint Venture Board for delivering the project. Lee describes how the coronavirus has affected him and how he and his team have been working during lockdown. He tells Adam his predictions for how things will change, not just for this project and for construction, but for industry overall. Lee believes that we cannot expect simply to go back to how things were. We need to extract the positives of what we are currently experiencing, learn from these, make adjustments, normalise a new approach and then make it stick. Lee ponders many questions: Can we accelerate the process of reducing numbers of people at work in danger zones? What technology is out there to enable social distancing? Can we rely solely on remote visualisation in real time using drones? Adam asks Lee what other industries, including healthcare, can learn from the admirable strides construction has made in the last 20 years. Lee’s response is surprisingly simple – and it’s rooted in behaviour.
