Golden South Wind, LP (“Golden South”) and Borea Construction (“Borea”) take our collective responsibility to provide a safe working environment for our teams and for the communities in which we work very seriously.
It is important for us to follow the advice of public health authorities and ensure that we safely deliver the Golden South Project and its renewable energy to SaskPower. Borea has begun to mobilize on the Project work site to restart construction in order to receive wind turbines and start providing power to Saskatchewan.
Service providers to utilities have been deemed Critical Public Services, and Construction activities in general are included on Saskatchewan’s list of Allowable Business Services. As such, we have taken significant measures to reduce the risk posed by the COVID-19 to our teams and the community while the sites remain in operation. As a leading construction firm in Canada, Borea has established a COVID-19 Pandemic Response Plan that can be found on Borea’s website at www.boreaconstruction.com/covid-19.
This plan is continuously updated as the circumstances evolve, follows the recommendations of all public health authorities around the Country and includes mandatory measures to enforce physical distancing on-site and off-site for the staff and contractors.
According to this plan, prior to any employee or contractor arriving in the community, they must complete a questionnaire to assess risk factors for COVID-19 infection, self-isolate for 14 days before coming to the work site if they have been out of the country and stay home if they show symptoms consistent with COVID-19.
At the Project work site, the following additional measures are being taken: Out-of-town workers (workers who have come from areas other than Saskatchewan, Alberta or Manitoba) will be advised to avoid all contact with the local community for a period of 14 days, moving directly from their accommodations to the work site. We will work with local businesses to ensure that essentials and meals can be delivered to them during these 14 days. A nurse is posted on site and will take the temperature of every person entering the site to ensure that no one with a fever is inadvertently allowed on site.
Anyone with a fever will be refused entry to the site and they will be directed to call the Saskatchewan Health Authority’s HealthLine at 811 and follow their directions. If an out-of-town worker is advised by the Health Authority to isolate or quarantine, Golden South and Borea will provide a location for the worker to quarantine that does not require the worker to travel. We will continue to adapt the response plan to comply with the directives of the Government of Saskatchewan Given the increase in the number of temporary workers in the area, we are attempting to maximize physical distancing while still retaining some of the economic benefit for the region.
To this end, Golden South and Borea are working together with local authorities and local businesses to arrange for daily deliveries of lunch and – potentially – other essentials to the work site to minimize the need for workers to interact with the community.
