The coronavirus entered the U.S. in January 2020, and by March, the virus virtually shut down the entire country. All over the world, the pandemic-induced “new normal” has caused nations and its residents to rethink and adopt novel social and health protocols. The healthcare and construction industries were at the forefront and, in many cases, had to be the nimblest to react and lead within the new direction.

COVID-19 and the way people view daily habits, environments, interactions, and overall safety will remain a reality for years to come. The necessary reassessments must be reflected in the stipulations for immediate protection and to prepare for the next widespread health emergency or natural catastrophe.

Hospitals have long been acutely designed to mitigate infectious diseases. Also, the success rates in safely treating patients are increasingly high when proper behaviors are used and access to enough personal protection equipment (PPE) is not in question. However, it’s clear those factors aren’t enough to put patients’ and employees’ concerns brought on by the current unprecedented pandemic at ease.

Designing for the New Normal

Planning healthcare facilities in a post-COVID world could include complex operational and infrastructure design considerations. An immediate concern is for hospitals to keep elective, or necessary but not life-threatening, surgery cases going while dealing with overflowing emergency departments and intensive care unit beds. The challenge is making patients feel comfortable to have surgery during a pandemic. For example, a few months removed from the spike in coronavirus cases in New York, hospitals are still not seeing patients return, and most procedures are only back to 50% to 70% of what they were. In response, medical centers are already implementing design and staff reconfiguration plans to create segregated areas within certain units or adjacent to the main hospital to ensure fluidity and increase patient satisfaction.

For the long term, hospitals must take a hard look at prioritizing infrastructure upgrade projects. Building new HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) systems and improving the medical gas infrastructure may not have a significant return on investment at first blush, but will be factors patients start to measure when deciding where to have treatments done. It will likely become the norm for a patient to ask about the surgeon as well as HVAC systems, and maybe not in that order.

Healthcare systems are also considering micro hospital development with urgent care and inpatient capabilities on a smaller scale. Additionally, expanding services to more rural catchment areas is being explored to get treatment options closer to patients while alleviating the overflow of the main acute care hospitals. Going forward, hospitals may move more services that must continue regardless of a pandemic (i.e., childbirth) out to an ambulatory or free-standing center model.

Some of the supply chain, speed-to-market, and labor issues the healthcare construction industry continues to experience has sparked new discussions on alternative development, such as increased consideration for modular solutions, which the medical sector has previously been slow to embrace. As the construction industry faces a potential decline in skilled labor, modular lends itself to cross-training, which cannot happen on a traditional commercial project site. Benefits also include controlled construction environments, waste reduction, and quality control, all of which create tremendous value.

Adjusting to Evolving Construction Guidelines

While it’s interesting to consider how healthcare design could potentially change forever, project managers currently grapple with construction challenges due to frequently changing guidelines that vary from city to city. The requirements remain unclear, and thus, the safety of workers is the concern and main priority. At the same time, adjusting to new rules almost daily continues to cause delays as substantial as the shutdowns, further postponing the delivery of much needed medical space and economic recovery.

In most metro areas, new guidelines require additional staff on all projects to check in on workers and ensure that protocols are being followed. For example, in New York City, managers must maintain contact tracing and cleaning logs, take workers’ temperatures, provide specific signage, and make sure social distancing is in place. Shift work has been implemented at some sites to allow for social distancing. In this situation, separate entry and exit points are designating for the shift arriving and the shift leaving, which sometimes creates long lines of workers that span entire city blocks awaiting site access.

As aforementioned, the healthcare construction industry is also experiencing a decline in available skilled labor. Some tradesmen don’t want to come back to work due to COVID-19 concerns, and others are making as much or perhaps more money staying home with the increase in unemployment benefits. Supply chain issues also persist with the unexpected closures of manufacturing plants in different parts of the U.S. at times.

Despite the many challenges, healthcare system managers and construction consultants are working diligently to reimagine medical facility designs for the future while mitigating today’s ever-changing construction guidelines. One thing is for certain; there will be significant changes coming, and the healthcare industry will be at the helm. 

Richard Simone is CEO and president of Central Consulting & Contracting, a full-service construction management and general contracting company that specializes in healthcare facilities. He has over 35 years of experience in the construction industry. Central Consulting & Contracting has worked with many major healthcare systems across the U.S. East Coast on complex projects from hybrid robotic operating suites to ground-up development and facility planning.

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SAN FRANCISCO—Gensler, the world’s largest designer and architecture firm, recently published a study called “Transforming Healthcare,” whose aim was to examine the potential means for healthcare construction and future clinical layouts amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Gensler’s Health & Wellness division commissioned the study as well as interviewed field experts to determine precisely what the healthcare environment will look like as the world comes to terms with a new reality for treating patients in the clinical setting, where safety and separation of patients from medical staff has taken on a new urgency thanks to the transmissibility of the COVID-19 virus.

According to the study, it is now incumbent upon healthcare facilities to foster “an environment that feels safe and [makes] patients and employees feel valued, while re-confirming that their health matters.” Accordingly, the next step in healthcare delivery will require not returning to the status quo of the pre-COVID times, but rather necessitate taking the approach that “this disruption is an opportunity to reimagine the delivery of care.”

If high-volume patient care is ever to be viable again, Gensler found that “a carefully choreographed course of immediate actions and long-term efforts” will be needed. This will require not only a refocus on the part of clinicians, but also reassuring patients and their families that it is safe to even visit a hospital for care. “The strategy of getting patients and staff back into clinical environments is to reduce fear, rebuild trust, reassure, and communicate clearly how their well-being is considered,” Gensler’s study found.

The best defense against hospital-wide infection is a good offense, the study’s authors advise, which can be accomplished in redesigned healthcare environments through such common-sense measures as distancing workstations adequately, employing one-way airflow, extensive hand-sanitizing stations and adjusting staff and patient-arrival schedules to a more phased approach.

Gensler advises redesigning the physical layout of healthcare spaces to better facilitate a reduction in contact in waiting areas and examination rooms. Contactless interactions and “smart building technologies” are recommended as well.

Key to the success of any such future endeavors is that hospitals and other healthcare spaces take a systemic approach to enhance the patient experience as well as reduce the chances of cross-contamination and infections being spread in the clinical setting.

Furthemore, Gensler’s study found that the public has greatly shed its confidence in the ability of healthcare spaces to foster this very kind of safe atmosphere. Correspondingly, the audit advises that it will be incumbent upon healthcare settings to not only reconfigure their spaces to head off disease transmission but also to restore “lost confidence” that the coronavirus pandemic has made endemic in much of the public when it comes to feeling safe in a healthcare setting. Gensler said that designers should therefore focus on creating what they call “Humane Healthcare” that addresses those very concerns.

The June report from Gensler, commissioned under the firm’s Global Health & Wellness department, carries recommendations not just for Gensler properties but for all those firms that work in the healthcare sector moving forward.

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CALEDONIA, Minn.—New healthcare construction has been ramped up at several locations around the country as the United States continues to grapple with the coronavirus pandemic, but even with new healthcare facilities being completed, at least one isn’t yet open to patients. In sleepy Caledonia, which has a population of only a few thousand, the new downtown Hiawatha Valley Mental Health Center’s brand-new offices do not yet have staff working onsite during the pandemic.

According to WXOW, the new mental health center, which sits just down the street from the healthcare firm’s former offices, was completed in April, but as the worldwide virus pandemic has continued to rage, Hiawatha’s employees have continued to perform their consulting work from home rather than in person. This includes supporting patients dealing with both symptoms of the virus, as well as mental health emergencies entirely unrelated to the illness at all. Staff at Hiawatha have continued their work via video conferencing, by phone or other technology, WXOW reported.

According to the report, the new office space adds additional space for Hiawatha’s workers, as well as expands the services offered there to include substance abuse counseling, “life skills” instruction and better therapy options for children. The report said that the new building hosts five therapy offices as well as one designed specifically for telemedicine.

Furthermore, Hiawatha has said that staggered rooms will allow for a more tranquil patient experience. It is unknown if, when the facility does eventually begin accepting patients, the staggered room plan will also be utilized as an ongoing method of halting the spread of coronavirus, which has been especially virulent in healthcare settings where patients and caregivers continue to come into close contact.

However, the staggered room design also allows for more privacy, with Hiawatha’s representatives claiming that the distance between consultation rooms allows for better isolation, according to the report. The rooms are also soundproof, allowing for privacy between patients and their doctors.

Hiawatha Valley Mental Health Center operates five clinics in southeastern Minnesota, according to WXOW. According to the stop-hairloss-meds.com, the company was founded in 1964 and has engaged in a specific focus on the importance of mental health since that time, particularly getting said care to people in their homes in rural areas.

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GLEN ELLYN, Ill.—Alumni of the College of DuPage’s architecture school have briskly transformed the McCormick Place convention space into an ad hoc treatment facility for coronavirus patients. An announcement from the university, which is located in the western suburbs of Chicago, said that the work on the city’s convention center was completed in only two weeks due to the dedicated work of alumni as well as local assistance.

A fleet of hundreds of workers on the ground worked tirelessly on turning McCormick Place into a modern medical facility, with space to treat patients in some 2,250 individual rooms in the redesigned space.

Alumna Michelle Binet, who now works in Los Angeles for the global engineering firm AECOM, brought some of the design experience she has gleaned in her professional work to the project back in Illinois, where her alma mater is located. Binet prepared architectural drawings for the redesign of the convention space, as well as assisted with services including code reviews and managing accessibility for various areas of the building, including entry and exit cleaning rooms, staff lounges and medical locker rooms.

“My team and I, along with hundreds of others, including the Illinois National Guard and the Army Corps of Engineers, worked non-stop trying to get everything designed and constructed before the first wave of patients arrived,” Binot said in a news release from the university.

In addition, Binot’s team reconfigured meeting rooms inside the convention space so that support staff from the Chicago mayor’s office could be situated near a command center inside the new healthcare space.

The reconfigured convention center space was laid out in such a way that 3,000 beds would be available for treating covid-19 patients. The plans also entailed 500 “negative pressure” tents that keep air infected with coronavirus particles from escaping, as well as import clear air into the treatment rooms.

“Hopefully we won’t have to use all the beds and rooms available, but I’m glad to know we are helping patients who may need support,” Binot said. “I’ve never worked on a project quite like this. It has been incredibly rewarding to see a project come to fruition this quickly with the help of so many hardworking and passionate people.

Added architecture professor Mark Pearson: “We are very extremely proud of our Architecture alumni, like Michelle, who are using their professional expertise to make a difference in our communities and helping to support our healthcare system during this global crisis.”

“Let’s all do our part in flattening the curve and reduce [the] burden on the local healthcare systems,” Binot said.

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PHILADELPHIA-As construction work has begun to resume in the City of Brotherly Love, construction workers are encountering a shortage in needed N95 safety masks.

In the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, construction crews were asked to donate spare N95 masks to Philadelphia-area healthcare facilities, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported, but now, with construction tentatively resuming, the city’s construction workers are finding it hard to get supplies of the masks they need to perform their work and protect their lungs from both dust and chemical fumes.

The N95 masks were plentiful on construction sites in early March, the Inquirer story found, and thus construction firms donated many to hospitals and other healthcare operations just prior to Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolfe shutdown order. Hundreds of masks were donated by the construction industry to the healthcare sector at that time, according to the report.

Wolf has since loosened some restrictions put in place to tamp down the spread of the coronavirus in the Keystone State, thus allowing certain construction work to resume. Materials, construction workforce and some philadelphia dumpster rental services have seen a recent increase in demand in response to works. Greater Philadelphia was hit especially hard by the virus, and thus the city is now experiencing a dearth of N95 masks. Amid the shortage, both healthcare and construction workers have been wearing masks longer than was typical before the pandemic prior to disposing of them.

Because supplies of the masks are running thin throughout the region, some contractors are seeking to source them however they can, which has led some to try to get to supply points ahead of competitors. Furthermore, larger firms with greater financial resources are typically able to purchase more masks in bulk before smaller companies can get even a few, the Inquirer report found. (And due to the basic law of supply and demand, a box of masks that a few months ago cost $20 now runs for twice as much.)

Other masks have been tried as well, but they aren’t as efficient at filtering particles as are the N95 masks. The Inquirer’s reporting found that many construction workers in Philadelphia are now even bringing their own masks from home to their job sites-if they have them. When those run out, some construction workers have been spotted without any face protection at all.

The concerns of mask-wearing at construction sites have less to do with transmission of the coronavirus itself and more to do with the airborne particles that construction work naturally unleashes. These include particles of concrete, insulation and lead paint, which are typically filtered out of the lungs with proper masking attire.

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According to the government policy watchdog website, TheHill.com, more and more governors across the United States are instructing state health officials to increase bed capacity to meet the expected surge in COVID-19 patients. As a result, many healthcare leaders are effectively working two jobs right now. Not only are leaders fulfilling their usual day-to-day responsibilities, but leaders are also focusing on how they’re going to modify their existing operations and facilities to care for COVID-19 patients.

Hospitals are looking for effective, efficient strategies and solutions that can be implemented quickly to keep patients safe and protect the caregivers and medical professionals on the front lines battling this disease. It’s important that our medical professionals are safe throughout this pandemic. With appropriate PPE clothing, doctors should be kept fairly safe. Additionally, distance tape should be used to help to keep people at least 2 meters apart at all times. Marking it out with this tape will help to remind people and make it clear where they should and shouldn’t be. As well as this, all people working in hospitals all over the world should have access to hand sanitizer at all times so they can kill any bacteria on their hands. Luckily, hospitals in the UK have strong supplies of hand sanitizer thanks to companies like phs Direct. For those who don’t know, phs Direct are the UK’s leading supplier of commercial wholesale hand sanitiser, helping to keep offices, workspaces and businesses as a whole up to vigorous hygiene standards. This is helping many people stay safe from COVID19. In contrast, hospitals in the US are only just starting to catch up with those in the UK. US officials are finally beginning to realize the problem that coronavirus is causing worldwide.

Here are several key issues to consider and strategies for leaders to address the unique aspects of the novel coronavirus.

Understand air handling issues regarding isolation spaces. As with any airborne infectious disease, COVID-19 patients need to be isolated to protect the health of other individuals in the facility. Since most hospitals only have a few isolation rooms, the influx of COVID-19 can be problematic. The air handling requirements to create additional isolation spaces fall into three categories, each with their own issues that are important to be aware of:

• First, 100% exhaust air is required. As with any airborne infectious isolation room (AIIR), the air in a COVID-19 patient room should not be recirculated. To conserve energy, most hospitals are designed to intake 25% of outdoor air and recirculate the remaining 75%. To achieve 100% intake of outdoor air poses a significant issue, as most hospital facilities do not have an infrastructure designed with this capability. It is important to conduct a thorough analysis of the hospital’s existing heating, cooling, fan output and controls. The total system impacts need to be understood and considered before attempting to increase isolation spaces. This is a difficult issue but one that is absolutely necessary in the case of COVID-19.
• Second, it is important to create a negative pressure in an isolation room to protect the other patients and staff in the hospital. Since the supply air to the room is typically designed to the code minimum, creating a negative pressure must be controlled through the exhaust system. Creating a negative space in the patient room on a temporary basis can be simple if the facility is willing to take out the window and put in what is basically a fan, blowing air out of the building. This will meet the code requirements for a temporary response. Creating a negative space is tricky because of the pressure relationship to certain rooms. If you make a change to one room, leaders could disturb other air change relationships.
• Finally, try to increase the amount of outdoor air to as close as 100% as possible. However, this poses issues. It is critical that leaders consider the ambient air temperature of outdoor air. If the air handlers are not sized appropriately to manage large intakes of cold air, they could freeze. Similarly, if the air is humid, and the air handlers do not have enough capacity, this may impact the ambient temperature within the isolation rooms as well.

Monitor. Monitor. Monitor. COVID-19 patients are in acute respiratory distress and require significant amounts of oxygen and medical gas supply for ventilators. As facilities start doubling up patients on ventilators, medical gas usage can increase significantly. It is important that leaders assign an individual to monitor the following on an ongoing basis:

• Bulk oxygen levels. When does the system need to be filled? Has this been scheduled?
• Med gas supply. Are there any supply chain issues? Are the current providers operating as usual, or has their delivery schedule been affected?
• Fuel oil levels. Are there enough fuel reserves to last a few days in case of inclement weather or if the facility has a power outage?
• Air filters. With the potential change in air flows, it’s essential to make sure all of the air filters have been replaced to limit the load on the air handler.
• Is there a sufficient supply of salt for the water softeners?
• Water treatment. Is the water treatment vendor able to maintain service?

Implement a formal checklist. The patient surge due to COVID-19 has changed how hospitals operate on a daily basis. Items that were once addressed on a weekly or monthly basis, now need to be checked daily. Keeping track of what leaders are responsible for can easily fall through the cracks, especially in light of quarantines and staff changes. Since there are still only 24 hours in a day, leadership does not always have time to focus on everything. A thorough checklist can be beneficial in times like this. Not only does it serve as a reminder for those in charge, but it also makes it easy to delegate individual tasks to others.

Limit the spread of coronavirus in surgical areas. As facilities are scrambling to create isolation units for COVID-19 patients, leaders are also preparing for other likely scenarios, such as how they perform surgery on an infectious patient. By code, operating rooms are required to be positive airflow. There are no exceptions to this rule. How does a hospital limit the spread of coronavirus if they have to put a patient in a room that is required to be positive, which is contrary to the current infection control measures? The following is a list of considerations:

• Do the procedure when no other surgeries are occurring in other operating rooms that are served by the same air handling unit (AHU).
• Use an operating room at the end of the OR suite corridor to contain the virus as much as possible.
• Put the AHU into 100% outdoor air mode if possible. If the unit does not stay on due to low limit temperature safeties, allow only as much return air as required to keep the AHU running. Operating room air handlers must have HEPA air filters. The CDC recommends not recirculating air unless it is HEPA filtered.
• If possible, put one of the temporary construction enclosures around the operating room door to the corridor and put a portable HEPA filter unit inside this enclosure.
• After the surgery is over, flush the air in the area served by the OR AHU for 60 minutes.

Recognize limits of HEPA filters. The CDC allows recirculated air as long as it goes through a HEPA filter, but it is important to remember that not all air handling units are large enough to push through a HEPA filter. There is some research that indicates that the coronavirus is small enough to pass through a HEPA filter. To err on the side of caution, consider blocking off access to areas where HEPA filters exhaust such as parking garages or spaces between buildings.

Communicate internally and externally. These are extraordinary times and call for extraordinary measures. The patient load at hospitals is changing daily, reaching unimaginable surge levels. While it is busy and lives are at stake, it is important that hospital leaders commit to a quick daily “huddle” with key departments to review status of key areas. Similarly, it is important to keep an open dialogue with all of the authorities having jurisdiction including the local Department of Health and the Joint Commission. To meet the surge requirements, many temporary renovations are being done, including some that may not be allowed by code. By keeping in continuous conversation with officials, explaining what measures have been taken, can help keep everyone on the same page. If hospitals have social media pages, then keeping the local community informed via those would also be a good idea. There are some recommendations on Violet PR that could be useful to many businesses, as well as hospitals.

In the modern era, the world has never experienced a time such as this. The global healthcare industry has been thrust to the frontlines of a viral pandemic battling an evasive and fast-moving enemy (COVID-19). The first quarter of 2020 may well be the greatest peacetime effort in innovative thinking the US, and the world has ever seen. The global coronavirus pandemic has affected everyone from teachers learning how to use e-learning full-time to everyone in the service industry learning how to work in isolation.

The industry is more equipped today than at any time in human history to handle such a battle with its enhanced technology, Lean operations, sophisticated air handling systems, and evidence-based medicine that facilitate life-saving care. The collective goal is to respond quickly – with Effective and Efficient COVID-19 Strategies… Right Now – so that we might stay ahead of this virus, reduce the spread, and allow modern medicine to save lives. Unfortunately, lots of people have contracted COVID-19 already, particularly in busy cities. For example, there are thousands of cases in NYC, which is why lots of people are choosing to contact places like this NYC COVID-19 Attorney. Seeking legal compensation is completely optional though. Just make sure you get the compensation you deserve.

Samuel Jackson, PE, LEED AP, is Director of Engineering with BSA LifeStructures. He can be reached at sjackson@bsalifestructures.com.

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ANN ARBOR, Mich.—A $920 million, 12-story hospital construction project at the University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor has been put on hold amid the coronavirus pandemic, with construction workers laid off. According to the Detroit Free Press, the university’s healthcare system, called Michigan Medicine, announced on May 5 that the project was being halted.

In September, Michigan Medicine announced that construction of the state-of-the-art, 690,000-square-foot hospital building was imminent. According to the Free Press, the healthcare facility was due to have facilities dedicated to neurological and neurosurgical care, cardiovascular specialization, as well as areas devoted specifically to advanced imaging. The project was projected to generate 370 on-site construction jobs and 1,600 full-time healthcare jobs when the facility officially opened its doors.

The Free Press reporting indicated that the pause in hospital construction will furlough 1,400 full-time workers and also result in a further hiring freeze. The fiscal impact will also result in a $230 million lost for the 2020 fiscal year and likely extend into Fiscal 2021 as well.

Furthemore, Michigan Medicine executives will also be taking salary cuts as the pandemic worsens for every sector of the economy, including the healthcare industry. Other reductions at Michigan Medicine include voluntary salary reductions for various department chairs.

In a statement released by Michigan Medicine, CEO Marschall Runge said that because of the ongoing pandemic, the company was faced with difficult choices that resulted in the necessity of cutting back on expenses, including on the hospital project at the university campus in Ann Arbor.

“We know that our collective effort will result in our successfully navigating this crisis and moving forward on a path of strength and sustainability,” said Runge, who is also dean of the university’s medical school. “Our economic recovery plan will help us continue to provide hope and healing to our patients and support our clinical, educational and research missions.”

No date for a resumption of the construction of the hospital at the University of Michigan has yet been announced, nor a date for when the furloughed workers can be rehired to continue work on the construction project.

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MINNEAPOLIS—A critical care solution to the shortage of hospital beds due to the coronavirus pandemic is being introduced by leaders in the healthcare construction market. The STAAT Mod (Strategic, Temporary, Acuity-Adaptable Treatment) is a prefabricated modular solution designed by HGA, a national multidisciplinary design firm and is being constructed by The Boldt Company for immediate distribution nationwide. It can be deployed in diverse environments from convention centers to free-standing hospital expansions. A focus of these units is the safety of healthcare workers treating patients with COVID-19.

HGA and The Boldt Company have partnered with Tweet/Garot, Faith Technologies and IMEG to provide the STAAT Mod solution, available now, that can be configured for the following applications:

• A two-room isolation unit designed for use in an interior shelter, such as in a convention center. This unit can be rapidly deployed from the point of order.
• An eight-bed unit of critical care isolation rooms consisting of four two-bed modules designed to connect to a hospital or existing structure.
• A 12-bed unit of negative-pressure open-bays consisting of four three-bed open bays modules connected to the central support spine. An infinite number of additional self-sustaining tiers can be added.

Multiple independent modules can connect to each other or to a hospital with segregated spaces for patient care and healthcare workers. The units allow additional capacity to be added or re-deployed to sites where the need is greater.

The STAAT Mod provides one of the only temporary care units that can be deployed quickly and provide hospital-level care to patients suffering from coronavirus.

STAAT Mod product features include:

• Design developed and tested through Virtual Reality (VR) simulation exercises by experts, including critical care nurses trained in COVID-19 protocols, a hospital environment specialist in infection control, and Lean process engineers for rapid construction and delivery
• Hospital-level clinical care for infection control, patient isolation, access to life-saving technology and isolation rooms if needed for extended periods of time
• Safety provisions for healthcare workers through standardized design, centrally located supplies, and segregated staff workspaces
• Pre-fabrication for speed, quality, and safety for contractors
• Costs significantly less than conventional construction

The CDC recommends Airborne Infection Isolation Rooms (AIIRs) for patients with infectious disease as coronavirus is spread via respiratory droplets or from droplet contact on surfaces. To create environments that extend hospital-level care, the STAAT ModTM meets CDC guidelines to provide immediate critical care to coronavirus patients.

HGA is a leader in design for the healthcare market, with a portfolio including some of the nation’s most significant and complex hospital projects. The design of the STAAT Mod is based on clinical protocol in dealing with infectious diseases.

“The STAAT Mod answers the escalating demand for more treatment space,” said HGA’s National Healthcare Practice Leader Kurt Spiering. “This engineered, modular design of hospital-level care environments puts the safety of the patient and healthcare worker first while still accomplishing speed and capacity of other solutions.”

The Boldt Company has been serving the healthcare market for decades, building hospitals and clinics nationwide. Construction teams have prefabricated elements of customized construction and are now employing that knowledge to create self-contained modules.

“Building in a controlled environment allows us to set and achieve aggressive production schedules that improve quality for the end user and maintain safety for our team members,” said Dave Kievet, Chief Operating Officer of The Boldt Company. “By standardizing the process we can increase speed to market and help save lives,” Kievet said.

Experts are available from HGA. Their research-driven solutions are based on designing the flexible environment needed for high quality, temporary healthcare. Construction experts are also available from The Boldt Company. Boldt is pre-fabricating the structures in a secure, safe environment designed to build and rapidly deploy ward modules, support structures, and infrastructure.

Learn more about the STAAT Mod Solution, including renderings and product details at: https://hga.com/staat-mod.

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LOS ANGELES-HMC Architects is among the latest design brands to manufacture face shields for healthcare workers in response to the ongoing coronavirus crisis.

Using the Columbia University Library Studios information as a guide, the design firm is applying its fabrication capabilities and Ultimaker 3D printers to manufacture PPE face shields and make them available to hospitals and clinics in its communities.

The United States is currently facing a face mask shortage as novel coronavirus continues to sweep through the nation; as of March 31 there are more than 161,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and more than 3,000 deaths. There are companies trying their best to provide custom coronavirus mask and shields for essential workers.

“As architects, we design to make people’s lives better,” said HMC President and CEO Brian Staton. “If there was any time for innovative design firms to step up and provide resources to make a difference in the lives of our communities, it’s right now. We hope to distribute as many as we can to support the efforts of our heroic healthcare workers.”

With 3D printers running all day, every day from remote (work from home) locations in Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose, Sacramento, and Ontario, Calif., HMC designers are estimating up to 35 face shields per day. According to Staton, HMC will continue to print as long as they have material to print with.

The face shields are made up of three parts:

An elastic headband holding the shield in place on the healthcare worker’s head; A 3D-printed headband connecting the elastic to the transparent shield that rests on the healthcare worker’s forehead; A transparent shield made of PETG (a thin, clear impermeable plastic).

Using 3D models provided by from the Columbia University Library Studios website, the firm is able to coordinate a lot of information at the same time to fabricate the 3D printed headband that connects the elastic to the shield. HMC is sourcing the face shield material (PETG 30 mil sheet material) from Riverside Plastics, a local Southern California plastic supplier. Other materials such as foam weather stripping for comfort and all-day use, elastic straps for the headbands, and Ziploc bags for packaging are being sourced from local hardware and fabric retailers.

During and after the items have been produced, HMC designers are sanitizing the shields and packaging them for distribution. The firm is putting together a distribution strategy and are in the process of connecting with healthcare organizations most in need and plans to begin distributing the face shields by next week. HMC has also been in touch with other local architecture firms in the hopes that their work inspires others to join their effort

HMC joins the list of other innovative design brands-such as Under Armour, New Balance, Chanel and Ralph Lauren-to find creative ways to respond to the shortage caused by COVID-19.

Earlier reports suggested if coronavirus would be declared a pandemic-which the WHO did declare on March 11-medical workers in the country would need an estimated 3.5 billion face masks over the year, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. Luckily there are different face mask types, which hospitals and surgeries can procure from many different companies like MedisupplyWarehouse.

HMC Architects is a healthcare, education, and civic architecture firm with a sustainable approach to design; it was founded in 1940.

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ATLANTA-As of the first week of March, there had been over 2,000 deaths worldwide due to the novel COVID-19 virus, also known as coronavirus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), after the virus originated in China late in 2019. The CDC had reported 53 cases of the virus infecting people in the United States thus far, and the first deaths have been recorded on the West Coast, which has seen an outbreak especially in one of Seattle’s suburbs. People are looking to sites like https://cristalcellar.com/ to find ways to sanitize their homes in light of this outbreak.

While the numbers of infections and deaths are likely not to approach the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-which resulted in over 200,000 fatalities-U.S. hospitals nonetheless are preparing to deal with a massive number of infections. According to the Advisory Board, the Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) in Nashville announced that all patients who enter the hospital with respiratory or fever symptoms will be asked if they have recently traveled to China or been in contact with an infected person. Furthermore, the hospitals affiliated with Emory University in Atlanta and UCLA in Los Angeles are preemptively adding travel-related questionnaires to their patient history forms.

The Advisory Board also reported that current protocols at hospitals will entail a rapid response time to ensure that patients who are potentially infectious are isolated to avoid further transmission. At the University of California, San Francisco, healthcare officials will be following a protocol set up during the Ebola outbreak of 2014-2016 to send patients suspected of having coronavirus to an isolation ward.

Elsewhere, an expert at the Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, near the hot zone of the U.S. outbreak, said that patients who are suspected of being infected with the coronavirus will have a surgical mask placed over their faces to help stop the virus from spreading further in the hospital setting. As the virus is believed to spread through airborne transmission in some settings, it’s a good idea for patients to try and find something similar to this kn95 mask to keep themselves, and those around them, safe. This can help the spread of the virus to decrease, limiting the number of people that become affected by it.

While surgical masks are key in hospitals and other healthcare settings to help prevent a pathogen such as novel coronavirus from spreading among staff and patients, many reports have come in of consumers’ “panic-shopping” for the masks and thus depleting supplies necessary for healthcare workers. Whilst it is fair for them to look into the fashionable face masks available, other supplies should be retained for essential workers. As reported in the Washington Post the first week of March, Surgeon General Jerome Powell has said that the effectiveness of the surgical masks at preventing someone in the general public from contracting the virus is debatable. There are things you can do if you want to be risk-free this Corona outbreak though, so make sure you follow the guidelines that are announced.

Despite the relatively few number of infections and deaths worldwide, public events have been canceled in many countries affected by the virus, including in hard-hit Italy, where the upcoming Six Nations rugby games will be played in empty stadiums as a precautionary measure to try to tamp down on further transmission.

Six Nations rugby games will be played in empty stadiums as a precautionary measure to try to tamp down on further transmission.

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