Health System Physical Plant teams regularly jump into action to assist with emergencies, outages and last-minute projects.
During the summer of 2022, UVA Health decided to consolidate all its patients from the UVA Transitional Care Hospital back to University Hospital. Regulatory ramifications created an exceptionally tight timeline for the project. To accomplish this, five separate units were relocated in the span of six weeks with HSPP teams renovating four of the units as they became empty in between each move.
“The HSPP Zone 1 South maintenance team serviced the unit like a NASCAR pit crew and then the HSPP Renovations group refurbished the units on a quick turn-around,” said Director of HSPP Derek Wilson.
The teams worked to patch and paint units in University Hospital 3 West, 3 North, 4 West and 4 South. The 4 South unit of 28 patient rooms was converted from a COVID unit to a cardiovascular unit and had to have airflow rebalanced to accommodate the change. Assistant Director for Engineering and HS Renovations Dan Cardwell and Automation Services Senior Electronic Technician Dustin Griffin balanced and adjusted airflows working tirelessly on 12-14 hour days to meet the deadline while not impacting the airflows on the adjacent occupied patient floors above or below.
The project renovated a total of 56 patient rooms as well as other support spaces. All Transitional Care Hospital patients were moved into 3 North at the end of August.
“We had very little time to complete this and we met the deadlines under budget,” said Wilson. “The team pulled together and made it happen.”