Doing Our Part to Protect Our Communities from the Spread of Coronavirus
Category: Building Community
Written By: Jay Edwards
Date: April 3, 2020
At Parkhill, our highest priority is the health, safety, and welfare of our employees, clients, and colleagues. Our mission statement is Building Community. As our communities are being profoundly affected by the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19), we have thoughtfully considered and will continue to consider what we can do at Parkhill not only to build our communities but help protect them.
We are adjusting to a new normal at Parkhill as we begin to understand this global pandemic. I know you are too. We hope you and those around you are staying safe and well during this time. We stand ready to help in any way we can.
While so much around us is changing, our mission at Parkhill remains: “Building Community by creating inventive, relevant built environments together.” Building Community means ensuring the health and safety of our people, our families, and our communities. Over the past several years, Parkhill has almost doubled our geographic footprint, and during that time we have been confronted with the challenges associated with working as “one firm” across all offices. This obstacle resulted in making significant improvements to our IT infrastructure, communication infrastructure, and online meeting tools. It has allowed all Parkhill employees to “work across the wire” between offices and telecommute from any location. It was not an easy transition but one we are thankful we made as it is allowing us to progress almost seamlessly with your projects.
With that in mind, we want to reassure you that we can comply with the “physical distancing” measures that are being implemented in our service areas and around the world as well as keep your projects moving forward. We have implemented a new protocol that I want you to be aware of.
- With a few exceptions, our people are working from home. We have implemented many things over the last few years that will make this easier than ever before, but it is still an adjustment for them and for you.
- We are limiting travel to project-related, car-accessible needs that can’t be accomplished remotely.
- We are requiring visitors to our office (by appointment only) to sign in and observe strict guidelines for physical distancing.
- We will be answering calls as usual.
- We are committed to serving our clients, moving projects forward, and delivering on schedule within budget and with the standards you would expect from us. If you do not feel like this is happening, please let me know, and I will work to remedy that.
- All our employees are well-versed in conducting WebEx video conferencing. This is a highly collaborative platform through which we can share screens and mark up drawings and interact quite effectively.
We are happy to share what we have learned over the last several years as we collaborate and make the workplace changes necessary to help mitigate the impacts of COVID-19 in our communities.