We’re making changes in order to ensure social distancing and a safe working environment for our team and yourlselves
Nicola Sturgeon believes that phase 2 of the lockdown’s easing will start the on the 18th of June. This means that we’re making small steps to reopen for business. Non-essential construction work is illegal in most circumstances until phase 2, despite the fact that many builders have returned to work already.
Being just a few days away, we’re analyzing all our processes to make sure we can work in a new post covid period. Our business was from its early beginning prepared for social distancing, at every step in our processes we tried to make everything as efficient as possible; this particular efficiency, which translates mostly in using technology to a high degree for example communicating mostly through electronic communication, minimising the time needed for quotation vistations, ordering stuff online and avoiding brick & mortar stores.
We will try to go a little bit further than this. In the past, when we were quoting for a project this usually involved meeting you for 10 to 15 minutes. This is in fact the longest period you have to discuss with one of us. According to the government’s website, you need to be less than 2 metres away from somoene for 15 minutes to catch the virus. To minimise this, you can:
- Contact us by email instead of arranging a meeting. Nowadays the email is really powerful and you can attach videos/images and we can send quotes/forms to complete.
- If a meeting is necessary, then we’ll minimise the total time to discuss. This means that we’ll come, it’s going to take 2-3 minutes to take measurements with a laser device and the rest of the discussion can be done outside or through emails.
After the quotation, you’ll be able to choose products/discuss options with us through email/phone or webchat. The actual work shouldn’t at any point mean that we have to discuss with you for at least 15 minutes less than 2 metres. If you need to tell us anything during the actual work, please call us on the number listed on our website or send us an email. Avoid explaining to the workmen any points, we were already using video calls among us to explain/pinpoint things.
Also, remember that we aren’t taking deposits. This is really important, since you’ll get invoice for the work done only. This is important this period since a lot of businesses might apply for insolvency (since they have been able to take loans quite easily) and start a new company again; if this happens, your deposit is basically lost. So make sure you don’t pay a deposit this period since it’s unsafe!
Other possible obstacles
As we said, our business was very prepared for social distancing. This business was started early 2015, just when the Aberdeen downturn started. We know how to handle a crisis, but there are some things we can’t predict.
A possible obstacle are our suppliers. For many products our suppliers get products from abroad. For example almost every tile you can buy in UK is imported from Spain or Italy. This means that our products catalogue will change every month or sooner to take into account any suppliers that sells different products.
A second lockdown, national or regional, is possible. This means that we won’t be able to book jobs for long period of time, most likely 4-6 weeks ahead at most. This ensures that we don’t get stuck with a large amount of supplies if a lockdown is imposed again.
