ADAPTING TO THE NEW NORMAL: ROBERTSON & CAINE

If there’s one thing you cannot replace in Cape Town’s boat building industry, it’s the people.

“We have tremendous craftsmen and women here. The skill they seem to have learned over generations, and their ability to work with their hands is just incredible,” says Peter Giliam, Managing Director of Robertson & Caine.

Giliam sat down for an interview with Invest Cape Town at the company headquarters in Woodstock this week to speak about Robertson & Caine’s plan to get staff back to work safely.

The man at the helm of one of the world’s leading catamaran producers says employee safety is a number one priority as the company prepares for the ‘new normal’ brought on by the Coronavirus pandemic.

Around 50% of the company’s workforce will be back at work by the end of May.

Since reopening, Robertson & Caine has implemented new hygiene controls, including daily screening and compulsory health and safety training for all staff.

The new measures are documented in the R&C Covid-19 Guidebook, a comprehensive manual explaining the company’s ramped up safety procedures.

“The first thing we did back in March was establish a Covid-19 action committee because we knew this was going to be big,” says Giliam.

The team, comprising of company executives, health and safety officers and human resources staff, spent most of the initial 21-day lockdown period working on the guideline.

“We were working 10, 11 sometimes 12-hour days during the lockdown, so it wasn’t a holiday for us,” says Giliam.

“My home is back in Gauteng and I was up there, but my family didn’t see much of me because I spent most of my time in the study working on the guideline: preparing the actions, the measures, the activities. For example, we tried to understand how many people could fit into the various spaces in our business; analysing what is good practice from a health and safety point of view.

“Looking back now I think it was a pretty good thing we did. We are pretty proud of the guide, and what we’ve managed to do.”

We knew that Covid-19 was going to change the way we operate.

Open and honest communication with staff will be critical for businesses as they embark on this new journey, says Giliam.

“We have been communicating with the staff on a regular basis, at least once a week, through a communication tree. I put out a verbal message via WhatsApp, and that goes through the various levels in the company to all of our staff. They know exactly what’s going on and are fully aware of the new measures and safety precautions in place.”

Another important aspect is training. Each of Robertson & Caine’s 1 800 employees will undergo Covid health and safety training before re-entry into the workplace.

“If it’s their first time back at work, staff have to fill out a questionnaire followed by a two-hour training session.”

The company has also developed a nifty Covid-19 screening app for staff to prevent pileups at the gate as workers report for duty.

“Staff can get the app loaded onto their smartphones and answer the screening questions before they get here. If they have answered the questions correctly, they get a green screen which enables them to bypass the paper screening process, and takes them straight to the temperature check,” says Giliam. “If you are cleared, you are allowed to pass through.”

Giliam admits that the prolonged nationwide lockdown has had a “massive impact” on the business.

“We had an order book of 188 boats at the beginning of this year; these are international customers, primarily in the US, the Bahamas and the Caribbean. The pandemic reduced that pretty rapidly at the end of the first quarter down to 150 boats. And because of the extended lockdown and restrictions, the curfew for example, and having a restriction on the number of people on site, we are down to 130 boats. We have lost a massive amount of income. It’s had a huge impact on us.”

Despite the current challenges, Giliam is filled with optimism for the future.

“I have incredible hope for the future of SA… but we have to get back to work.”

Giliam’s message to businesses in the boat building industry is simple: “Take care of your people. Health and safety has to come first.”