University of Southern California (USC)

As California’s largest university and home to over 47,000 students, USC has a continual need to upgrade and maintain its campus. This was made even more challenging with this year’s COVID-19 pandemic, which greatly increased the need for safety and compliance oversight and training.

USC teamed up with BCI to provide safety and COVID-19 mitigation services across a huge number of simultaneous projects, including 28 different projects currently underway with an average of 70 workers on site daily; ranging from small maintenance upgrades and remodels, up to the construction of entirely new buildings. The BCI team is overseeing projects from earthquake-safety retrofitting to dormitory and laboratory renovations – and of course a major focus is COVID-19 protections for the students, faculty, and construction staff.

BCI provided our standard three phase approach, beginning with a broad safety assessment, and then the development of a site-specific safety plan. We provide USC with full-time safety managers on-site, including two COVID managers, to oversee not only the safety aspects of the construction work, but the adherence to COVID-19 protocols that we’ve developed to keep the campus team and the students safe, as well as monitoring the third-party contractors on the site as well.

This has been accomplished through a collaborative approach, including the BCI team directly addressing any compliance issues with contractors and staff on behalf of USC leadership.

With this attention to detail and comprehensive support, USC is positioned to continue moving forward on its ambitious campus improvements while ensuring the continued safety of its students, faculty and construction teams. And most importantly, this dedicated effort supports the core mission – getting students back on campus as soon as possible while maintaining exemplary protection for their health, with clear documentation of these protections to assure all regulators, students, and families that the campus is a safe place for