LATEST NEWS AND UPDATES

As you are no doubt aware, the COVID-19 virus has been an increasing feature of the daily news cycle. It presents a significant health risk to our community that cannot be ignored, and most recent advice issued by the Federal Government and relevant heath authorities inform us all to be prepared for a variety of disruptions in the coming weeks and months.

The purpose of this email is to keep you informed of Rivergum Homes’ efforts to prepare for the anticipated disruptions, as well as indicating the potential sources of interruption, delay or work stoppage at works sites across our Victorian operations.

Rivergum has in place effective response and recovery capabilities in the event of disruption to our business. We have introduced additional safeguards to reduce the risk of disruption to the services we provide you.

These include:

• The activation of our Crisis Management Team, which is meeting regularly to adjust and adapt our contingency arrangements as needed
• Readying the broader team to activate work from home arrangements for all office-based staff where practical, including the deployment of additional IT hardware
• Requiring employees who have returned from countries with a high rate of human-to-human transmission of COVID-19 to follow the Government’s Health Isolation Protocol, which includes self-isolation at home for 14 days;
• Cancelling non-essential travel and group gatherings
• Limiting non-essential face-to-face customer meetings through the use of Skype, Facetime and other video conferencing options
• Rolled out a comprehensive sanitisation program and extraordinary appointment protocols to ensure colour selection appointments can continue in the short term while ensuring the health and safety of our staff and customers remains paramount.

What this means for you is that in the event we are required to close our offices for a period of time we have measures in place that will allow your home to progress through the standard pre-construction processes, performed by staff working remotely.

In addition to the above, many businesses are seeing a global impact to business continuity as a result of COVID-19. In our industry there is a risk of delays relating to regulatory approvals, external consultant deliverables such as engineering or private certifying, construction products and materials having interrupted supply from both international and local suppliers alike, and trades succumbing to the virus to name a few. At this stage we have prepared mitigation strategies for all of these scenarios and more. Fortunately, to date, there has been minimal disruption for Rivergum.

While it is impossible to predict any ongoing impact, it is reasonable to anticipate some level of disruption in the coming weeks and months, however we want you to have confidence in our efforts to pre-empt disruption as well as efforts to minimise delays wherever possible.

In response to recent news, the latest available government guidelines and the rapidly evolving situation, we are taking action, and following the best advice from experts and the Department of Health to ensure the safety of our staff and customers alike.

The Rivergum Homes team continues to closely monitor the rapidly changing landscape around COVID-19. Further updates will follow should our operations or the delivery of your home or project change. In the meantime, thank you for your support and patience under these challenging circumstances.

Kind regards,

Ryan Lee
National General Manager
Rivergum Homes Group