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pandemic hospital build
April 3, 2020

How to build a hospital wing for a pandemic in just 14 days

It started as a parking lot.

Then came the swooping aluminum supports with durable, white material wrapped over them.

Almost overnight, the painted lines were covered up and the pavement outside Joseph Brant Hospital began its transformation into a pandemic response unit.

It’s a project locked in a 14-day race against COVID-19.

“Every day counts,” said Mark Watts, president of BLT Construction, the company tasked with erecting the structure and keeping up with the critical countdown. “Every day means lives.”

Dr. Ian Preyra, chief of staff at the Burlington hospital, believes a “remarkable surge” in patients is coming.

That’s why the hospital announced Monday it plans to spend more than $2 million putting up the temporary 93-bed facility.

The pandemic unit will house patients with mild to moderate symptoms of COVID-19 who would otherwise overwhelm hospital resources over the next two weeks.

“We are essentially creating surge capacity based on the worst-case scenario,” Preyra explained. “It would be a blessing if we didn’t have to use this space.”

For BLT, the race began in Calgary where Sprung Structures loaded trucks with the crates and bundles that made up a rush shipment of the different parts needed to assemble a hospital.

The technical name for the type of building that’s going up is a “tensile membrane structure,” he patiently pointed out — not a tent.

“For a hospital environment it’s graded for snow loads, high wind speeds, hurricanes,” he listed off. “So it’s a safe building to be erecting for this type of application.”

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