The city of Tampa plans to issue coronavirus guidelines specific to the largest construction projects underway across the city.
Carole Post, the city’s economic development chief, told the Tampa Bay Business Journal that the city is in the process of hiring an occupational health and safety expert who will be conducting random visits to the sites to inspect distancing and sanitization measures.
The guidelines are expected to be issued in the coming days but could be released as soon as Wednesday afternoon.
Across Tampa, 52 projects meet Florida’s construction code threshold for “large scale,” meaning they are at least three stories or 50 feet in height and have a occupancy of 500 people or more.
The guidelines, Post said, will be an advisory — it’s not enforceable like the stay at home order. But it’s meant to keep construction humming while stopping the spread of coronavirus. Construction is considered an essential industry, and neither Tampa nor Florida has looked to shut down sites in the wake of the pandemic.
According to the city’s data, as many as 15,000 construction workers are on site of these large-scale projects daily.
“We just want to up the ante and invest to make sure we’re doing as much as we can to keep the job sites safe and sanitized,” Post said. “It’s a huge industry.”