How R-II Builders beat the covid odds
Now it can be told.
Beating the odds posed by the covid pandemic was not as easy as one might think. In fact, never would it ever be.
The crisis began in the aftermath of the partial lockdown of Metro Manila on March 15, 2020 and the subsequently unprecedented Enhanced Community Quarantine over the entire Luzon as a national emergency response of the government to the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic.
The Luzonwide lockdown eventually got extended all the way to May 16, 2021.
From the implementation of the very first community quarantine up to the present Modified Enhanced Community Quarantine (MECQ) in Metro Manila, all office and on-site project operations of R-II Builders have been adversely affected.
The constraints include the irregular and, at times, stoppage of transport by air, sea and land to and from Metro Manila; minimal volume of construction materials and manpower for transport to project site; quarantine and border checkpoint requirements; complicated procedures for securing quarantine certificate and related documents from LGUs and medical test results from accredited government hospitals or clinics for the travel workers to their work stations; the 59 years maximum age limit for workers in a construction site; the virtual ban on employment of construction workers with comorbidity issues; the shortened and sometimes suspended bank operations; the limited and temporary closure of some supplier firms; the requirement for temporary covid-19 facilities and related guidelines for resumption of work such as provision of sleeping quarters and observance of social distancing, washing area for the workers’ personal hygiene, disinfectant tents at the project’s entry and exit points, and the maximum 50 percent deployment of manpower per project.
On top of such constraints is the psychological effect of the pandemic on the entire workforce, including management, thus hampering the pacing, sequence and productivity of work in both the office and the field and posing a threat to the company’s bottomline, growth targets, and financial stability.
As such, R-II Builders had to find a way to maximize productivity within the limits of the government’s covid prevention guidelines.
But instead of adopting austerity measures by cutting down on its operating expenditures, R-II Builders invested heavily in its employees’ welfare. The company provided free transport service, food supplements, face masks and shields, handwashing solutions and disinfectants, antigen testing, interest-free hospitalization loans, anti-covid vaccination assistance and facilitation, daily individual assessment of employees for covid symptoms, early release of half of the 13th month pay, enhanced benefits from the HMO provider, and continuous health and safety planning for the entire workforce without exception.
Strangely, such measures were brought on stream when many local construction firms and other businesses were temporarily or even permanently closing shop.
But to the chairman’s mind -- if charity begins at home, so does building better lives.
He was right. Such unusual corporate moves have further solidified R-II Builders into a reliable growth engine in both the industry and the national economy.
With a fully collaborative workforce in good times and bad, R-II Builders was able to tide itself over the slowdown in income stream and optimize productivity at every window of opportunity, thus enabling it to complete and turn over its projects on time or even ahead of schedule.
Adding feather to its cap even on extreme occasions just won’t go unnoticed. At the height of the pandemic in September and October last year, R-II Builders won five new projects worth a total of almost half a billion.
Those projects were on top of the six others simultaneously undertaken by RII Builders starting in March 2020 and totaling some P3.65 billion.
Meanwhile, subcontracted projects from R-II affiliate Arconic in September last year totaled almost P2.4 billion.
In October of that year, R-II Builders also completed the construction of a temporary quarantine facility for the Philippine National Police Region 3 headquarters in Camp Olivas, San Fernando City, Pampanga.
Currently, R-II Builders is undertaking various projects for the DPWH for completion in May next year.
Such feats make our 33rd anniversary this year worth celebrating.
Moving forward to 2022, the company is eyeing some P4.7 billion worth of projects from government entities, and around P11.2 billion from the private sector.
Such optimistic targets remain driven by R-II Builders’ visionary pursuit of building better lives. The wisdom behind it is best expressed by our chairman in the context of today’s still prevailing covid crisis, saying:
“Building better lives for Filipinos is only exceeded by the current priority to keep them alive, and that should be our biggest win!”
Congratulations and happy 33rd anniversary to one and all!
