Directed COVID compliance across HGTV’s fast-paced, four-team home renovation competition.
Rock the Block is HGTV’s blockbuster renovation competition series, in which four teams of designers race to renovate homes for the highest resale value. As COVID-19 Compliance Production Manager, I directed COVID compliance across the fast-paced production, managing testing logistics and safety protocols and coordinating across four build teams and crew.
Behind the Scenes
Where were you?
South Carolina
What’s the moment things went sideways?
This one had its own layer of complexity since we had four teams renovating four different houses at once, which meant coordinating testing and compliance across four separate work sites instead of one central stage.
A crew or cast story that still gets told
This story ties back to the backyard challenge, where each team was inspired to create a backyard oasis a family could grow into, for both the humans and their pets. To bring that to life, we partnered with a local animal shelter, and that afternoon we had puppies on set, one for each team. During a break in filming, all the crew members were soaking up their puppy time. That was one of the scenes we never wanted to end, because how do you go back to work after being around puppies?
What would a viewer never guess?
Running COVID protocols across four active construction sites at the same time meant our team was constantly moving between houses to check in on testing, PPE, and compliance rather than working from one central location like our other shows.
What were you actually running day to day?
I worked with our COVID-19 supervisor to make sure each of the four build sites stayed compliant with CDC guidelines and union rules, checking in with each team’s crew throughout the day and coordinating testing schedules across all four houses.
What are you proudest of on this one?
Keeping four separate renovation crews safe and on schedule at the same time was its own kind of puzzle, and I was proud of how smoothly our team managed to keep all four sites compliant without slowing down the competition.