By Rob Wyssbrod, President and Chief Operating Officer
Information about COVID-19 changes by the minute. A pandemic such as COVID-19 creates challenges for businesses on a number of levels. With this in mind, the uncertainty of each day has brought to light the importance of preparedness in times of crisis. The leadership team at Firmatek is closely monitoring the evolving situation with COVID-19 and has adjusted protocols accordingly. In this brief article, Firmatek’s President and COO provides a summary of what we’ve been doing to keep our employees, clients, and the general public safe as we continue to provide critical services to our customers around the United States.
Working Together for Everyone’s Safety During COVID-19
Our primary effort at Firmatek has been ensuring the safety and health of our employees and those of our clients. It’s imperative that we support our clients’ continuous business operations as almost all of them have been categorized as essential infrastructure in the recent executive orders. The quarries we visit support construction and maintenance of vital infrastructure, landfills, and electrical utilities, thus they maintain active operations during this time.
At Firmatek, we’ve taken the following actions to combat challenges associated with COVID-19:
1.) Implemented a virtual command center
– We have a real-time database of customer special COVID policies and procedures
– We also maintain a real-time database of relevant government laws, regulations, and executive orders impacting travel and business operations. This has been challenging due to the patchwork of orders coming out from multiple local and state governments.
– We have contingency plans for ensuring uninterrupted business operations for different scenarios, including employee illness and supply chain difficulties.
2.) Developed and rolled out new operating procedures. These have been focused on two things:
– Ensuring we conduct ground travel in a way that keeps our employees, those of our clients, and all of their families safe.
– Ensuring we conduct work on customer sites per our new NO CONTACT procedures.
3.) Created special internal communications channels and folders.
– This helps share the latest information, including guidelines and news from the CDC and similar health organizations on prevention and seeking medical care if needed.
4.) Conducting daily operations huddles / SITREPs to stay on top of the current situation.
COVID-19 demonstrates that business contingency planning is a worthwhile exercise. We are happy to share our research, procedures, reference material, and other tools with those who are interested in the safety protocols we’ve implemented. Please reach out to Rob at rob.wyssbrod@firmatek.com for more detailed information.
About Rob Wyssbrod
Rob joined Firmatek as Chief Operating Officer and has recently been named President and COO. Prior to joining Firmatek, he had experience in a variety of sectors. After graduating the U.S. Naval Academy with honors, he served as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps. He led a combat engineer company in Operation Iraqi Freedom. After earning his MBA at Kellogg School of Management he became a strategy consultant with BCG. Most recently he was a senior director of strategy for Thomson Reuters, a global Fortune 500 company. Rob earned a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the U.S. Naval Academy and an MBA and Masters in Engineering Management from Northwestern University.
