BROWN & WATSON INTERNATIONAL OPERATIONS UPDATE

 

7 December 2020:

At our BWI site in Knoxfield we continue to work under a COVIDSafe Plan and a COVIDSafe High Risk plan in line with the Victorian Government requirements and in our State offices in Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia and New South Wales our team work to a COVID Safety Plan. All of these stringent plans ensure we provide our employees with a safe workplace, enabling us to Stay Safe, Stay Open across the country and allowing us to continue to offer our customers our usual high level of service. We regularly review Government guidelines, keeping up to date with changes to restrictions and adapting our Plans as these occur.

Current strategies to staying safe include:

  • Restricting access to our sites where ever possible

  • Record keeping of all persons entering our sites

  • 75% of our office staff in Victoria remain working from home

  • Wellness declarations by employees

  • Physical distancing of 1.5 meters and occupant levels in offices and rooms

  • Stringent cleaning and sanitising to a high standard

  • Regularly reviewing and updating our COVIDSafe Plan, COVIDSafe High Risk Plan and our State Office COVID Safety Plans

5 August 2020

The Victorian premier recently announced Stage 4 lockdowns for metropolitan Melbourne for a period of 6 weeks and declared of a State of Disaster in Victoria. The intention of these measures is to limit the number of Victorians moving about our communities so that we can reduce the spread of COVID-19. To help understand the impact to industry, the Victorian government has provided guidance as to which sectors and businesses will be permitted to continue to operate under “Guide for Business – Stage 4 Restrictions” available on the DHHS website.

Brown and Watson International Pty Ltd (BWI) has conducted a thorough review of the government’s guidance and has determined that we fall into a number of categories that are permitted to continue operations, subject to the adoption of a COVIDSafe plan and the reduction of the number of on-site staff. As such, BWI will remain operational throughout the Stage 4 restrictions. During our review, we have prioritized consideration of:

  1. Federal and State government regulations;

  2. Our people’s health;

  3. Our community’s wellbeing;

  4. Our business’ sustainability; and

  5. Our customers’ requirements

While BWI will continue to operate, the necessary reduction in the number of our people on-site will have an impact on our operational capacity. We do therefore ask for your patience and understanding as we seek to prioritize our activities around maximizing output by adopting the most efficient practices possible.

Additional measures we have enacted:

  • Adoption of a COVIDSafe plan for our Knoxfield site and state offices;

  • Prohibition of access to our site by the public;

  • All interaction with couriers and transport operators is contactless;

  • Our Victorian sales team are only conducting customer contact by phone, email or MS Teams;

  • All team members who can work from home, are working from home.

We will continue to respond to any updated guidance from government and inform you as appropriate. In the meantime, please feel free to contact us on 1800 113 443 at any time should you have any questions regarding this advice.