Richie Stever, is the director of operations and maintenance at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore. A whirlwind of activity from his department rapidly expandedCOVID-19-related capacity at the medical center, according to a article from Building Operating Management on the FacilitiesNet website.
Together with the operations team, the hospital created eight different surge plans, with each step up converting more space to make it COVID-19-related.
In May, at Surge 4, Stever's team had moved the facility from 100 isolation rooms to 300 over five weeks, with the guidance telling them to make as many negative pressure rooms as possible.
The medical center's original isolation rooms are managed by the building's exhaust system, so to add capacity they removed windows and ducted HEPA units out of them. They created anterooms and airlocks on the fly. They tweaked the HVAC system, turning down supply and turning up return in certain areas.
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