GRANT COUNTY — Construction has been allowed to resume for projects already underway, Gov. Jay Inslee announced April 24, so long as workers follow stringent social distancing and hygiene requirements.

But some of the small-business owners who make up the bulk of the local construction industry say that many of those requirements are onerous and will make their work much more difficult.

Most residential construction projects in the region involve only a few workers on any given job site, making it easy to keep six feet apart, said Dustin Swartz, chapter president of the Grant County Home Builders Association and general manager of Moses Lake-based J&M Electric.

But other hygiene requirements will be more difficult to comply with, Swartz said, including requirements for soap and water to be available on-site — a taller order than it might at first appear to be.

“That might not seem like that big of an issue, but oftentimes on a construction site you just don’t really have that,” Swartz said. “You’d need some sort of a washbasin or something like that. For a homebuilder to buy a trailer or something with all of this on there, that could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

Then there are other requirements that workers regularly sanitize “high-touch surfaces,” Swartz said, which could have broad implications for an industry that is hands-on with its work. Scrubbing down lumber with rubbing alcohol would be impractical, he noted, and fumigating the site after each day would be cost-prohibitive.

“Larger companies might be able to spend the money it takes to get that in place all the way,” Swartz said. “But small businesses?”

A manager or foreman is also supposed to be on-site monitoring to ensure that workers are following these guidelines, Swartz said, a huge cost when there might only be two or three people working on any given site. How the state intends to enforce compliance also seems ill-defined, Swartz said. Are electrical inspectors going to be on-site to ensure compliance? Is a state trooper going to show up to inspect their hand sanitizer?

Even if an outfit can comply with all of the restrictions, it can only resume projects that are already underway. And while “underway” is another term with unclear meaning — does that mean permits have been secured, or is securing financing for construction sufficient — by any definition it will result in a backlog of construction orders, Swartz said.

Ultimately, that glut of work could cause prices to rise, he added.

“You’ve got a long list of things to do in a shorter period of time, which could cause construction to become too cost-prohibitive,” Swartz said.

The full price tag from this slow resuming of construction might not be seen for a year or more from now, he added.