New Model Aims to Help Businesses Get Back to Work After COVID-19

A new model aims to help commercial and public organizations resume operations safely as restrictions around the COVID-19 pandemic begin to ease.

Building on guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), ABS Consulting said its Restart Risk Model offers a way for organizations to systematically evaluate the risk of disease transmission to their sites, operations and work areas, and develop a plan to restart operations with enhanced working practices that address the ‘new normal’ business environment after the pandemic.

“As governments begin to lift restrictions, business leaders will want to act quickly – but how do they bring employees back to their work sites safely?”  said Ryan Moody, President and CEO at ABS Group. “This is something all organizations are grappling with. Our framework offers a practical way to address these decisions. The Restart Risk Model is designed to support decision-making about reopening and modifying work operations and monitoring risk as conditions change and new guidance emerges.”  

The model leverages industry-specific templates developed by ABS Consulting to assess an organization’s site and develop a custom risk profile. Through a systematic process, ABS Consulting will work with a client to document current risk controls for worker safety and make recommended mitigation controls for back-to-work scenarios and opening and closing of sites. Controls include prohibition of certain activities, decontamination and sanitization, social distancing, personal protective equipment, isolating symptomatic employees and managing third-party interactions.

The model also includes an integrated dashboard that provides a visualization of risk levels at work sites. As conditions and guidance evolve, organizations can easily see where they need to adapt.

“We have taken an engineering approach to build a process and model for systematically analyzing scenarios and making recommendations to manage risks to worker safety,” said Matt Mowrer, Director of the Product Development and Innovation Center at ABS Consulting. “These practical tools will give businesses the ability to quickly build plans for how to resume operations when the time comes.”