Metfab Metals, LLC

“Out of All Evil, Comes Some Good”
The Pandemic Taught Us a Lot; Let’s Continue to Use That too!

MEMBER:

[Our Plasma Cutters Still Have Available Capacity for Your Precision Parts Orders]

Metfab Metals learned much from the Pandemic, as did many of our customers & colleagues. These lessons were not all economic, though lessons were absorbed with real economic losses & lessons. Let’s review some of these so that we all are not blind-sided in so many ways and had to learn to deal with their effects, as we worked hard to adjust. We made hard decisions, but suffered no human damage such as loss of life and in many ways, minimized losses that were potentially real and impactful.

Many articles have now been written identifying what we did well---and what we might have done better. The federal agency (OSHA) responsible for leading the recommendations for worked safety recently summarized what we can do:

If you are in the manufacturing industry, the following tips can help reduce the risk of exposure to the coronavirus: • Encourage workers to stay home if they are sick. • Establish flexible work hours (e.g., staggered shifts), if feasible. • Practice sensible social distancing and maintain six feet between co-workers, where possible. • For work activities where social distancing is a challenge, consider limiting the duration of these activities and/or implementing innovative approaches, such as temporarily moving or repositioning workstations to create more distance or installing barriers (e.g., plexiglass shields) between workstations. • Monitor public health communications about COVID-19 recommendations for the workplace and ensure that workers have access to and understand that information. • Train workers on how to properly put on, use/wear, take-off, and maintain protective clothing and equipment. • Allow workers to wear masks over their nose and mouth to prevent spread of the virus. • Encourage respiratory etiquette, including covering coughs and sneezes. • Discourage workers from using other workers’ tools and equipment. • Use Environmental Protection Agency-approved cleaning chemicals from List N or that have label claims against the coronavirus. • Promote personal hygiene. If workers do not have access to soap and water for handwashing, provide alcohol-based hand rubs containing at least 60 percent alcohol. Provide disinfectants and disposable towels workers can use to clean work surfaces. • Encourage workers to report any safety and health concerns. For more information, visit www.osha.gov/coronavirus or call 1-800-321-OSHA (6742). 

Here’s some of the immediate steps, our CEO, Jim Murray implemented early on:

1. Studied all our workspaces (even measuring most) to give all employees (office as well as shop) to maximize safe “breathing room” for all;
2. Upgraded PPE (already in stock were masks etc.);
3. Outsourced many functions to lessen the indispensability of work time (in shop) for safety of our employees (as a direct result of dependable outsources, we lost ZERO long-term valuable, experienced staff’
4. Detailed cleaning of shops & offices upgraded to daily;
5. Restriction of sales calls, customer visits, delivery times;
6. Restructured functions of office staff so “work from home” was more practicable and still productive.

Most of our Purchase Orders require all of our skills in fabricating the project-unique architectural members specified. both internal and external to the building itself. Of course, we have done museums, hospitals, educational buildings, office towers and more, even during the low throes of this pandemic.

As we have reported before, we have been privileged to be selected to supply a spectrum of specialty metals for various aspects of a number of buildings at the iconic Hudson Yards In NYC. Last year (June, 2021), we also featured the magnificent new New York City home of GOOGLE, with progress pictures of the buildings being consolidated with 550 Washington Street per the full report from the online construction reporter, YIMBY. That well illustrated what we here at Metfab Metals can to contribute to a full custom “RETRO” job, Much of this was accomplished as the epidemic, then pandemic, raged all around us.

As we like to report, we are already for many regular customers the “GO TO” guys now for RETRO and AESS projects. Years of continuous AESS work for the mega-development at Hudson Yards for multiple customers speaks volumes about our developed capabilities in this art form, as well as a real-life recognition for the type of expertise (including post-fabrication documentation) we always bring to these specialty AESS as well as RETRO jobs. Now we’ve also shown that we react well to emergencies, yours, ours, our universal ones.

Let us be your “go to” guys and bring to your varied projects the same care, precision and effort we build into precision specialty parts every day.

Keep us in mind for all your steel fabrication jobs, no matter the configuration
of the building, its scope, content, sophistication, or specifications.

Jim Murray, C.O.O.                                          973-675-7676   
 

We always offer to work with our customers from the
job "concept" stage to anticipate issues before fabrication, to suggest
better ways to order, extrude, cut, drill, paint, finish, even stage and
deliver and always to save time and money.