31 Tower crane heavyweight NFT has left no stone unturned to ensure the health and safety of its employees and customers while maintaining business continuity in the Covid-19 crisis.
“We have been in the market for 35 years, we have seen many ups and downs and the reason we’re still here today is because we adapt to the market while maintaining what NFT represents at its core: providing the best products and services to our customers”
in the UAE. We also re-allocated our employees so that there was only one person per office and produced in-house glass partitions for rooms with more than one person. “The biggest challenge during this crisis is ensuring business continuity and safety of employees simultaneously. Our QHSE department has been monitoring developments and NFT is strictly implementing all recommendations from trusted sources who are experts in the field - such as the UAE’s Department of Health, the WHO and Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The health and safety of our employees and customers are and have always been our number one priority. “By default, our occupational activities are relatively safe and in line with provisions to combat spread of Covid-19. We work with steel structures in open spaces that are exposed to the sun and heat, which makes it resistant to the spread. However, the exposure remains with the human element outside those activities, such as commuting to work and within each employee’s personal life.” Early on, NFT formed a ‘Crises Management Committee’ comprising its top management, QHSE, administration, operations and HR departments. The job of this committee is to follow up on the current Covid-19 developments, remain in contact with UAE officials and with NFT’s sister companies overseas, and come up with measures in line with official recommendations. “The second step was for NFT to raise awareness and we’ve run more than 15 dissemination and educational sessions about the virus and ways to control its spread to different groups in all employee languages. Trainings were conducted with sanitation people, drivers, or the more vulnerable groups who can be more exposed as per our risk assessment surveys. In addition, flyers, posters, videos and publications were circulated wherever possible inside the offices, workshops, vehicles, and even in workers’ accommodations.” When it came to transportation of men and materials, NFT adjusted its modus operandi and adopted procedures conforming to international recommendations and mitigation measures mandated by the UAE government. “With the risk of transmission highest while commuting to work or living in worker accommodation with high concentrations of people, we started with vehicles. For commuting to work, the UAE directives require 30% occupancy in the vehicles. Effectively it means, we tripled our bus trips to worker accommodations and increased our fleet of small vehicles and minibuses. We also added plastic sheet dividers inside the buses to
