Socially Distanced Factory

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From keeping our distance to washing our hands more frequently, we’ve all had to change our behaviour to minimise the spread of COVID-19.

At many of our facilities we produce parts or assemble and test engines for high-capacity, military or business aircraft. Before COVID-19, we designed them to facilitate production and to be as efficient as possible, not to inhibit the spread of viruses. Now, we’re adjusting to a new way of working.

Because we’re a global business, our facilities have been through stages of the pandemic at different times. The vast majority of our facilities have continued to operate, but with short pauses to make sure the right hygiene and social-distancing practices are in place.

So how do we continue to manufacture products while preventing the spread of COVID-19? First, we consult our Chief Medical Officer, Dr David Roomes, who has worked with teams around the world to come up with a blueprint that can be put in place at our sites.

Our strategy is a combination of changing our behaviour and using spaces differently.

“It’s about optimising our actions and behaviours in such a way as to minimise the spread. Everything that we are doing is about risk reduction, not risk elimination,” says David. “Social distancing and hygiene will remain the backbone of the public health strategy to limit the spread. These measures also form the core of our approach to enabling our people to work while minimising the spread,” he adds.

Workers in Weifang, China, monitor engine testing data with physical dividers in place.

Keeping a distance

We’re all pretty familiar with social distancing by now. But it’s easier said than done when working in a facility where teams normally work closely together. People must change their behaviour, helped along by physical interventions such as dividers or one-way systems.

For example, in our testbed control rooms, we’ve installed physical dividers between workstations, and have limited the amount of people in the control room during an engine test. On our Oil Purification and Defence assembly lines, portable dividers are placed around an engine to distance workers. Staff are given inductions, which cover how they should do their job while adhering to the new measures.

Physical dividers around engines help workers keep a safe distance.

Dennis Dyson, Assembly and Test Director, Oil Purification says the measures take some getting used to but are a case of building new habits: “We had to help people to embed our new normal, making it as easy as possible to put new working practices in place. We’ve amended start and finish times to keep people working in different groups separate, and we asked colleagues to bring their own food and drink. Adjusting to a two-metre distance has been interesting, but it helps that people are getting used to doing this outside of work, such as when they go to the supermarket.”

So how close is too close? Dr David Roomes explains that rather than focussing on an exact measurement, it’s about pragmatism and minimising the time spent close to others.

“In terms of social distancing, we define close contact as being within two metres of another person for 15 minutes or more. In some countries this is 1 metre or 1.5 metres. There is nothing magic about either of these numbers and it is absolutely not the case that 2.1 metres is safe and 1.9 metres is unsafe,” he says. “It’s simply a convenient yardstick, the principle being that the further away you are from another person and the less time you spend close to them, the less likely they are to transmit coronavirus to each other if either happen to be infected. Passing someone in a corridor or on a staircase is not considered close contact and we need to be sensible and pragmatic in this regard,” David adds.

In our production facilities we’re putting clear, physical dividers in place to separate work stations. We’re also encouraging people to keep to one side in communal walkways (like you might see on public transport), closing off communal areas such as changing rooms, and we’re looking at how our canteens can provide packaged food for employees.

As a general rule, masks are not required in our facilities unless it’s mandated by the local government. However, employees wear them when the task they are doing means they are within two metres of a colleague for more than 15 minutes.

Where workers can’t maintain distance for more than 15 minutes, they wear masks. Gloves are worn for tasks where they are usually worn anyway, or where people are touching the same parts repeatedly.

Alongside social distancing, personal hygiene is the best tool we have in order to prevent the spread. This encompasses both our personal hygiene and the cleanliness of our workplace. Of the two, our personal behaviour – handwashing, cough and sneeze etiquette – is the most important.

While these behaviours are becoming ingrained in our way of life, we’ve put up reminders in facilities to encourage people to wash their hands, cover their mouth and nose if they sneeze, and most importantly, stay away from work if they feel unwell.

We’ll supplement this with extra cleaning, including tools and parts that several people use throughout a shift.

A new way of working

The measures we have in place are aimed at encouraging people into new habits, rather than making people feel alarmed. So rather than using hazard tape and stop signs, we use positive reminders, such as encouraging people to wash their hands or maintain a safe distance.

“Given that we will be living with social distancing and new ways of working for the foreseeable future, we need people to feel safe at work. We are implementing measures that are sensible, pragmatic and that don’t signal that the workplace is inherently hazardous,” says David.

“How we show up when we’re in the workplace is so important. To some extent, we’re all feeling our way and as long as we always treat each other with dignity and respect, I have no doubt we will make a success of it,” he adds.