#COVID-19: BiKBBI release coronavirus strategy

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BiKBBI COVID-19 Strategy

The government are planning to move its strategy to deal with the COVID-19 virus from the initial containment phase to the second of a three phased plan.

The second phase, referred to as the ‘delay’ phase will see a mixture of the same advice provided, such as personal hygiene, however social restriction measures may be introduced in an attempt to slow the rate of viral spread.

In the delay phase, so called social distancing measures such as school closures, home working and reducing large scale gathering will be considered by the government, although early suggestions are that these measures will be a last resort.

In preparation, The British Institute of Kitchen, Bedroom & Bathroom Installation (BiKBBI) have set a contingency plan to support the minimalisation of disruption to the organisation, key stakeholders and the general public.

BiKBBI, whilst taking the threat of COVID-19 seriously, are setting these plans from a practical perspective in recognition of the everyday challenges that may be faced by its staff and their families.

Trigger

In the event the government initiate the second phase of their COVID-19 plan, specifically in relation to the national closure of schools and restriction of movement, BiKBBI will initiate the contingency. This will not be triggered for isolated school closures that do not affect the majority of staff.

Operations

Due to the practicality of staffing and associated childcare, any national school closure will impact some of our people’s ability to attend work in the usual way. Our plans therefore would be to enable staff to operate remotely from their homes.

In 2019, we introduced a fully digitalised cloud based operational system called Compliance & Administrative Management System (CAMS). This digitalisation will allow our team to continue the processing of data from anywhere with secure access to the internet. We will conduct a thorough process of verifying security before initiating this plan.

Whilst this would provide some logistic challenges, it would allow us to continue the processing of membership and the associated compliance without any significant disruption, but recognise that this scenario will be far from ‘business as usual’ and there would be inevitable disruption.

Our telephone lines would be suspended, until such time as the office resumed normal operations. Our key stakeholders would be given access to a temporary phone line for urgent enquiries and we would only accept routine communication via email, or our social media channels.

Our staff, who are at the very heart of our organisation, will continue to be remunerated in the normal way and we thank the government for their support of businesses as announced

in this-weeks Chancellors budget.

Our staff have been advised that they have a responsibility to protect themselves and those around them in accordance with government advice.

Inspection service

Our national network of inspectors will continue to deliver their service if they are happy to do so. We have introduced an additional protocol of customer contact to ensure visited households are not at risk of COVID-19.

In the event we identified a household at risk, any planned inspection would re-arranged for a future date, or cancelled and refunded where appropriate.

Non-urgent activity

To assist in the management of these extraordinary circumstances, we have today suspended all work on non-urgent business. This is to include scheduled group meetings, event attendance and the movement of people. The move has been made to allow us to focus on what’s most important to the operational delivery of our service, primarily the uninterrupted processing of our members compliance.

Members

We have already furnished our members with guidance on how they can protect themselves and others from the threat of this virus. We will continue to keep them updated and guide them to government sources of information to assist them, their families and their customers.

Conclusion

We will continue to monitor advice from our government and the World Health Organisation to ensure the safety and well-being of our people and their families is at the very core of our decision making.

We understand that the risk to life remains low for most, but we must ensure sustainable plans are in place to meet the practical challenges that this situation presents.

Future updates, including any initiation of the contingency, will be communicated via our website and social media channels.