Construction workers are on job sites across Alabama in the middle of a pandemic. They’re risking their health to work, just like grocery employees and mail carriers, but stopping has special risks for their industry, especially if a national recession is ahead, as many believe.

“Construction is usually one of the things that goes first when the economy turns.” That’s how Birmingham contractor Kyle Tyree put it this week.

Gov. Kay Ivey deemed construction work “essential” in her Aug. 3 statewide “stay at home” order, and that was good for builders. Restarting a job after shutting it down is hard, recession or not. And the bigger the job, the bigger the re-start pains. But construction jobs of any size have supply chains, financing arrangements and contract deadlines that both builder and customer don’t want to break.

“Lose your place in line and it’s hard to get back in,” one builder’s wife told a reporter about the competition for supplies.

But social distancing can be hard on a job site, and some people think builders aren’t really trying. “We’ve talked to several places who are doing construction and who we’ve received complaints on,” Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle said this week. All those crews were “very compliant,” the mayor said.

As for homebuilding or major home repairs and additions? “We’ve not really received any complaints,” Battle said.

Battle isn’t the only official getting calls, state builder representatives say. “Everybody’s out walking and riding their bike and then they ride by a building site where people are working, and it’s like, ‘What are they doing?’” Alabama Homebuilders Association Executive Vice President Russell Davis said this week from Montgomery.

“What I would hope they would see is that they’re practicing safe and effective ways to work – safe distance and things like that,” Davis said. “But, yeah, it’s a natural when you’re outside walking your dog and you see some guys framing a house and it’s more exposure, if you will, all the way around.”

The construction trades make up a huge and diverse sector of Alabama’s economy. Federal statistics say 95,000 people report to jobsites in Alabama daily on jobs ranging from skyscrapers to “simple” home repairs.

Industry spokesmen point to those home repairs as another good argument for staying on the job. “You’re working from home,” Davis said to a reporter, “but if your air conditioner goes out, you need somebody to fix it. Or your toilet quits working. Or you have something wrong with your septic tank.“

“We need to be available to fix things – commercial and residential – and hopefully fulfill contracts so that people who have bought homes or are depending on affordable housing can move in,” Davis said.

“While we agree that we are essential,” Associated Builders and Contractors of Alabama President Jay Reed said this week, “if there are cases where the employees’ health and well-being can’t be put first and over everything else, then those projects naturally would not be essential.

“When we’re named essential, that does not say everybody ‘shall’ and ‘can.’ It’s a policy and a guideline,” Reed added. “I think you’d agree. And when we can continue while putting the workers’ safety first, that’s what we’re doing.”

That’s how it looks at the statewide level. To smaller contractors, it’s about business as usual while the business is there. Particularly in hot commercial markets like Birmingham.

“It’s going as well or better than it was before the pandemic, honestly, as far as the volume of work,” Tyree said this week. “We’re really only seeing some delays in deliveries on some materials, especially stuff that’s coming from out of state.”

Tyree’s company, Locke General Contractors, does mostly interior renovations. Lately, they’ve worked on restaurants like Carrigan’s Public House, The Essential and EastWest. “It’s not super difficult to maintain distance and maintain those guidelines,” he said of the work his crews perform.

Tyree speculated that now-popular food delivery services might affect restaurants themselves. “Maybe everybody experiencing getting food from a delivery service finds it’s appealing to them more than they knew and not just a necessity,” he said. “We’ll just have to see how it plays out.”

Steve Preuss is field superintendent for a Birmingham electrical company that typically has 15 employees on jobs any given day. “Everything’s working, pretty much, down here,” he said Tuesday. “Some jobs are shutting down, and that’s usually due to the owner of the building not wanting any strangers or construction workers in there.”

“But all our people are still working,” Preuss said. Unless they’re not feeling well. His rule is “if anyone wakes up and they’re not feeling good, they’re to stay home. Whether it’s Covid or not, just to be on the safe side.”

Preuss is “confident in my procedures,” but he sees the changes like everyone else. “I feel strange because a lot of our work is out on Hwy 280, which is a big thoroughfare here in Birmingham. Usually, it’s bumper-to-bumper. Now, we always make the comment that’s it’s eerie we can get up and down 280 so quickly.”

“Eerie” is a word Preuss uses often these days. It’s eerie waking up and realizing “you’ve still got to keep going.” He’s the sole provider for his family, and “that’s a big drive.”

It’s eerie for his business to slow from seven days a week with a minimum of 16 hours overtime each week to a regular 40-hour week. “It is an eerie feeling,” Preuss said, “but kind of, in a way, welcomed. If you can understand.”

Preuss thinks “the worst is yet to come,” but he believes Birmingham will recover quickly compared to the recession of 2008. He was out of work most of 2009, Preuss said, “and it feels different this time.”

“I feel that once this thing passes, we’ll be back up and going full bore again,” he said.

He’s keeping a positive outlook until then. And he’s getting “a lot of stuff done around the house right now.”