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Though workers for general contractor Yorke & Curtis are preparing pumps and heaters for the winter weather forecast in Portland, company president Rob Yorke said he’s not worried.

“In Oregon, where the weather is so mild, it’s not like Maine or Minnesota where you can’t work outside during the winter,” Yorke said. “But I worked in California years ago. The first drop of rain, the job closes. Anybody from California coming up here can’t believe that we work in this stuff.”

Sites will remain open despite the weather, but if the school district in the area is closed, the job is going to be closed too, Yorke said.

The weather does present challenges: sites are wet, tools are more likely to short circuit and costs bump up. Estimators at Yorke & Curtis are making adjustments in order to have money set aside for cold-weather equipment and for protection and heat for buildings that need to dry out, Yorke said.

Common preparations for rain and snow include pumps to get rid of excess water, concrete blankets to keep freshly-poured concrete warm for several days and plenty of plastic to keep everything dry.

The most challenging winter projects are those where teams are digging in the dirt, though it’s also “hard to paint, hard to put stucco up and hard to roof. But you can get a lot of other things done inside,” Yorke said.

Another big challenge is physically getting to the site. “If we have a job at the airport, someone who lives in Rhododendron won’t be able to make it in bad weather. Even if the job is open, you have to weigh your own safe transportation,” Yorke said.

Transportation is also tough for the HVAC&R contractors of Hunter-Davisson, who maintain the heating and air conditioning systems of more than 1,000 buildings in Portland.

Heating equipment is stressed the most during freezing temperatures, said Hunter-Davisson President Greg Pelser, and the company will see an increase in calls for maintenance – up to triple the normal number – while the temperature is below 32 degrees.

“It’s our job to keep people warm and make sure we repair their heating systems,” Pelser said, which is why fleet manager David Breedlove is currently busy switching the company’s entire fleet to snow tires.

Hunter-Davisson will send out notices to customers containing cold weather tips for their equipment, such as checking glycol levels and using heat tape on waterlines to keep them warm during subfreezing weather.