How Does Snowplowing Fit Into Your Pandemic Planning?

2020 has been an interesting year for everyone across the globe. Now that summer is coming to an end, we’re thinking about how children will be returning to school and planning other fall activities. As we plan, there will also be a continued focus on how to deal with the on-going COVID-19 pandemic and the health considerations that should be followed.

An important thing to consider as we move into the fall is if your city has a snowplowing policy. And if you have one, is it written? If COVID-19 is still a local pandemic during the upcoming winter season, then you need to plan for the worse-case scenario. What will you do if you have a snowstorm and a plow operator out with a COVID-19 quarantine? What if you have two or three out on quarantine? Do you have a contingency plan to get the streets plowed if you are at 50% staffing?

Your city may already have a backup operator in place, while some of you are laughing at 50% saying there is only one person that operates the plow. When working on your plan, some questions to consider include:

• When do you need to start looking at the winter season and planning for these scenarios?
• Is your plan laid out for 14 days or more? Should it be?
• Should you look at mutual aid agreements with neighboring communities, county services, or even private contractors to pick up if the pandemic takes your staff away?
• Is cross-training other staff to plow an option? (I know of building inspectors that plowed snow for public works when they were short staffed!)
• Are there union contracts that need to be reviewed when working with other agencies or departments?
• When was the last time that you reviewed the plan to make sure it will still function as when the plan was first developed?

Having a contingency plan for staff is always a best practice, but this becomes magnified if the pandemic is still around through winter. When you have a policy, you can use that as a guide to make contingency plans in case of an emergency. It’s a baseline to guide staff and can lay out when plowing operations will start, what routes are priority routes, and what gets plowed last.

I developed a snowplow policy many years ago that laid out staff routes with full staff, two-thirds staff, half-staff, and quarter staff. Having this in the policy helps guide staff and administration to what needs to get completed when people are sick, late, stuck in their own driveways, or, now in 2020, possibly in quarantine. Without a written policy, staff may be plowing trails in parks while the priority emergency routes aren’t even opened to traffic.

If you are at full staff its typically easy. What about if you are half-staff, one private contractor, a county plow operator, and the finance clerk? What type of plan can you have for them once they arrive to start plowing and how the operation should flow? Is it going to be flawless? Not likely. But did the priority/emergency routes get opened in a timely fashion, did the priority facilities get plowed next, and so on?

Nothing ever works when you’re scrambling at 2 a.m. for a plow operator and you tell them to just go push the snow when they don’t even know the streets. Have a policy that provides a baseline for operations, allows for flexibility, and plans for staffing shortages.

I know we are all hoping that COVID-19 goes away soon, but what if it’s here through the winter? How will your operations get affected and what plans do you have in place?

Submitted by: Troy Walsh, Loss Control Consultant