A major Coquitlam worksite has had at least nine workers test positive for COVID-19, despite what supervisors say has been a stringent adherence to health and safety guidelines.
The individuals, who are all now in self-isolation waiting out their incubation period, are among roughly 300 workers at The Hensley condo project at Austin Avenue and Westview Street in West Coquitlam, according to staff on-site.
The positive cases show that despite sweeping measures, the virus can infiltrate a work force. Mike Holmes, a superintendent at Cressey Development Group, said health and safety staff have followed public guidelines at all steps along the way.
“We have temperature gauges we use, we set up wash stations at all entrances, we mask all the time,” said Holmes, “We even have numbered lunch rooms [where] we put place settings in so people aren’t eating within six feet of one another.”
“We’ve done literally everything and we have for a long time.”
The Hensley is not the first Tri-City development to face clusters of cases at its work site. Last month, a Port Coquitlam worksite adjacent to the city’s Rec Centre battled a cluster of cases among its tradespeople, and since then provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry has called on all worksites across Metro Vancouver to reevaluate their health and safety plans amid a surge in COVID-19 cases.
At the time of the Port Coquitlam cluster, Jim Lofty — who heads IBEW Local 213 in Port Coquitlam — said the episode reflects challenges across the construction industry as COVID-19 cases ramp up during B.C.’s second wave.
In the early days of the pandemic, construction workers and tradespeople were deemed “essential workers” by public health, and Lofty said his union, like many others representing workers in the industry, put pressure on employers and WorkSafeBC to get adequate protocols in place to keep workers safe.
“We’re still getting some complaints but not nearly to the degree we saw in March and April,” Lofty said. “Trying to find the balance of shutting down an entire crew or letting the health teams do their contact tracing? Those are things we’re still trying to work through.”
Despite their designation as essential workers earlier in the pandemic, the tradespeople at The Hensley went out of their way to help others who were thrown out of work as the economy slowed to a crawl.
On April 21, a pair of safety officers working at the 264-unit condo development sparked a call to donate food and cash to people in need. Within a few weeks, 230 tradesmen from the six construction sites donated more than 600 pounds of food items and over $17,000 in cash to the Greater Vancouver Food Bank.
