In the rapidly evolving landscape of COVID‑19 response, many states, counties and cities throughout the United States have taken drastic measures, including issuing executive orders halting all nonessential businesses. To provide direction on what businesses are essential, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has issued guidelines recommending that essential critical infrastructure workers (including construction workers in the energy industry) be allowed to continue working during the COVID‑19 response. Though the DHS guidelines are just that—nonbinding guidelines for states to consider—they have impacted many states’ stay‑at‑home orders and are of significant value to project owners in responding to such orders.

DHS Guidelines

The DHS guidelines outline the critical infrastructure functions that the federal government deems “so vital to the United States that their incapacitation or destruction would have a debilitating effect on security, national economic security, national public health or safety, or any combination thereof.” The DHS has grouped these critical infrastructure functions into 16 sectors, including, for example, health care and public health, transportation systems, critical manufacturing, and energy. With respect to the energy sector, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency of the DHS stated in its March 19 memorandum that workers who are “working construction” constitute “essential critical infrastructure workers.”