Last year, as the world came apart, contractors hatched a plan to come together. Determined to keep jobsites open and deemed essential around the U.S., a group of construction contractors partnered on turnkey COVID-19 prevention protocols for all companies to use. As statewide pandemic policies changed overnight, these competing firms focused less on winning and turned to the challenge of stopping everyone from losing.

“We do quite a bit of importing from China, so we definitely had an early pulse that COVID-19 was going to negatively impact the U.S. the way it tremendously did,” says Bob Clark, executive chairman of Clayco, a Chicago-based company that operates 13 hours behind China. In a “barrage of phone calls” and “feverish” 20-hour workdays, he says the company brought customers, craft workers, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), competing firms and even the White House to the decision-making table in real time.