While Master Builders Victoria is extremely concerned by the decision to severely restrict our industry’s capacity, it remains vital that critical infrastructure which provides services that are essential for everyday life continue unimpeded.

It’s good to see projects on the Victorian Government’s critical infrastructure list that are vital for our state and country, such as the new Centre for National Resilience at Mickleham.

However, there are some projects that do not appear on the list, despite them being exempt through last year’s lockdown and, on behalf of our members, we are speaking with the Victorian Government about them.

Whilst we understand that this decision is made from a health perspective, our sector has demonstrated a strong proven track record of keeping worksites safe and operating in a COVIDSafe manner, while also keeping the community safe by doing so.

We have worked tirelessly with the Victorian Government to co-develop agreed workplace settings that are COVIDSafe, together with investing in a strong and collective industry partnership to implement these efforts across our sector.

It is important to note that our industry has only had six positive cases since June 2021, with five of those cases being very minor impact positive cases, and only 148 cases in total since March 2020 compared to 20,837 state-wide.

Our data shows that workers are seven times less likely to contract COVID-19 at work in the building, construction, and development sector.

Our bespoke COVID-19 Building and Construction Industry Agreed Guidelines– which are now up to revision 13 - and implementation of COVIDSafe measures ahead of many other sectors has resulted in a high level of evidenced compliance, for example:

  • During the period 4 February 2020 to 12 July 2021, WorkSafe conducted more than 5,650 site visits under their COVID Response initiative, with improvement notices issued to less than 3.9 per cent of building and construction sites.

We are continuing to work with the Victorian Government on the responses to the management of COVID-19, and the steps to swiftly reopen the building, construction, and development industry to 100 per cent capacity.

Click here to view the full list of critical infrastructure sites able to operate at 100 per cent capacity.