COVID-19 (Coronavirus) – Our response

Our highest priorities are the safety and wellbeing of our employees, clients and communities. As such, we are providing the below update about our response to COVID-19 (Coronavirus).

Updated 27 March 2020

Our highest priorities are the safety and wellbeing of our employees, clients and communities. As such, we are providing the below update about our response to COVID-19 (Coronavirus).

In all our global locations, we are focused on complying with local government directions and ensuring our employees are as safe as possible.

SMEC is a global firm, and our Business Continuity Plans have already been activated to ensure that we can minimise business disruption as far as possible.

We are conducting ongoing and real time reviews to determine if additional measures are needed and are communicating with our employees and clients on a regular basis.

We are fortunate that we have already had remote working arrangements and technology in place to support global connection and communication for some time now. This means we are well equipped to deal with remote management of projects and continue to support our clients and partners.

Supporting our people

In response to COVID-19 we have implemented the following actions:

• Advising employees to follow health guidelines and travel restrictions in their area.
• Any employees who have been in close contact with a confirmed COVID-19 case must self-quarantine for 14 days since their last contact.
• Implemented company restrictions on international and domestic air travel.
• Recommended working from home and use of video conferencing for internal and client engagements.
• Cancelled attendance at planned events and conferences, and are working towards hosting online events.
• Providing up to date guidance to employees about risk factors and stressing the importance of self-isolating on return from high risk areas or in view of other factors such as exhibiting symptoms.
• Enhancing SMEC’s IT networks to support additional remote working arrangements.
• Increasing office cleaning procedures to ensure our work environments remain healthy.
• Constantly reviewing the Business Continuity Plans of each office in response to the evolving situation.
• When working with site project teams, employees are required to follow information specific to each site, as relevant to that location.
• If our employees develop any of the identified symptoms, we urge them to seek immediate medical attention.

Looking ahead

This is a challenging time as we respond to COVID-19 and the uncertainty surrounding it.

We are committed to working closely together with a shared focus on the health and safety of our employees, partners and communities around the world.

Thank you for your understanding and cooperation.