From the very start of the pandemic in March 2020, AECOM Tishman was on the front lines.
Beyond our fast-track construction of a 1,000-bed alternate care facility (ACF) at SUNY Old Westbury, we supported our community hospitals at 13 locations across the five boroughs. We built out ICUs, created patient surge space, compartmentalized emergency departments, installed and retrofit HVAC systems with state-of-the-art HEPA filters, and upgraded infrastructure to support doctors, nurses and staff in saving lives, treating patients and preventing the spread of the coronavirus. In one example of a fast-track, three-week hospital project, we converted a post-surgery recovery space into an acute COVID ward, with 12 complete isolation rooms, work that entailed isolation doors at each patient room, a nurse call system, cameras, flooring, and a nurse’s station, as well as the installation of a sprinkler system tied into the existing standpipe. We subsequently built out two state-of-the-art ocular operating rooms and 14 post-surgery recovery beds on a fully functioning hospital floor with 15 active operating rooms.
At the SUNY Old Westbury ACF, as well as at two other ACFs, we subsequently took over ongoing maintenance, keeping the facilities in a state of readiness to meet anticipated surges. One year on, we pivoted once again to transform the facilities into mass vaccination sites. We worked alongside our client on extremely fast-track conversions – which, in the case of the SUNY Old Westbury site weas completed in less than two weeks – and then took on the management of site operations and logistics, overseeing everything from greeters and vaccination scribes to janitorial and food services.