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04/15/2020 08:30 AMWhen Tim Barry and his team started working on a hospital interior renovation project in January, their goal was to be finished in under a year. That project was slightly sidelined in March, when Tim and his team put in place some exceptional temporary building extensions—in the form of three COVID-19 triage trailers and assessment tents, at three different emergency facilities—in just one week’s time.
The triage trailers were created in record time to help meet an anticipated crisis that officials felt was headed for primary emergency destinations in Connecticut. The Branford resident, a project manager with FIP Construction of Farmington, was a team leader for 3 of 10 triage units the company was tasked with placing in the state.
Tim was managing the interior renovation project at Backus Hospital in Norwich when medical professionals across the state began working with construction companies to form up COVID-19 response facilities. That was about 3 ½ weeks ago.
Tim and his team put in triage trailers at Backus Hospital, Windham Hospital, and the Plainfield Emergency Care Center.
“It was a team effort by some very talented, professional and thoughtful folks who stepped up and made it all happen. The building, engineering, and fire departments of those three towns were also wonderful to work with. Very professional people,” says Tim.
Looking back over the course of events, Tim says the work ramped up as needs began arising at the beginning of the state’s battle with COVID-19.
“The team had a meeting, and we assessed what the need was to match the emerging situation that developed,” he says. “When I first started the role, they had us setting up testing stations, which were essentially drive-through tents.”
The 20’ x 60’ tents allowed cars to drive through them so that teams could test those in vehicles for COVID-19.
“There was a trailer and some support structures, and people would drive in with their car and they could get screened, and then they were on their way,” says Tim.
Each tent took only a day or two to erect. Then, about a week after the tents and support facilities were in place, “the call came out,” for the temporary triage facilities, says Tim.
“I think everyone was worried about being overwhelmed,” he says.
“The overall idea was they wanted to prepare for a crush of people coming in with COVID symptoms, rather than everyone just rolling into the emergency room and jamming it up,” he continues. “We set up trailers—big, double-wide trailers, 60-foot by 24-feet long—and outfitted them with about 14 to 16 exam cubbies. And then next to the trailer was a 20-foot by 20-foot tent that we set up.”
The tents serve as screening stations for anyone arriving with what they believe are symptoms of COVID-19. Those found not to have symptoms are sent home; those who are symptomatic are directed from the tent to a ramp leading into the trailer, where their symptoms are triaged to determine severity. Patients deemed to be in need of immediate hospital treatment are discharged from trailers immediately into the facility’s Emergency Department.
Two trailers were bolted together at each site. The triage units provide about 1,200 square feet of space and are essentially an extension of the main emergency facility.
The trailer interiors and cubby dividers are covered with smooth, fiberglass-reinforced panels that can be wiped down and sanitized. Tim’s team also installed all necessary telephone and data links to the hospitals and tied each trailers’ power into the existing facility’s emergency power grid.
The set-up helps each facility avoid filling emergency waiting rooms with crowds of seriously symptomatic people—or those who may feel the need to jam up the site, possibly to the point of spilling out into the parking area, because they are simply panicked about COVID-19.
“So it’s kind of a throttle for the Emergency Department,” Tim says. “They are trying to determine the most severe cases and, rather than have everyone stack up in the Emergency Department, which basically has about 8 or 10 [exam] spaces available, they wanted to be able to control that flow as it came into the hospital.”
An Unusual Challenge
Tim says being tasked with managing three emergency construction projects at once was certainly one of the most unique deployments he’s taken on in his decades of experience, for a lot of reasons.
“It was very sudden, and we had to put together an action plan based on anticipation of events. So we kind of had to forecast, ‘Well, if a lot of people show up, what are we going to do?’” says Tim. “We had to be able to control the flow, out of the weather, within medical capacity, so that the emergency departments would not necessarily be overwhelmed.”
In his role with FIP Construction, Tim has gathered a background in overseeing medical facility projects through the years, including work at the Yale-New Haven Shoreline Medical Center in Guilford. So it wasn’t particularly unusual that he was managing a project at Backus Hospital when the COVID-19 emergency construction project plans began forming up.
“Initially, it was for tents for testing for COVID,” he recalls. “Then, the situation evolved rather rapidly. There were these numbers that everyone was projecting about [three] weeks ago, about thousands, or tens of thousands, of people who would be crushing the emergency rooms like they are in New York. They saw that coming. So some very thoughtful people, with a lot foresight, put some thoughts together [about] what we think we needed to have in place.”
After reviewing triage trailer and tent placement options with each of the three facility managers, Tim’s team worked to set each unit up as close to the emergency department as possible, without impeding daily operations.
“So we had to find a way to squeeze these things in as close we could and still allow for traffic flow, emergency helicopters etc., and find power to get the necessary power requirements to support each of these trailers [and] telephone, data links, and then put safety barriers around them, and get the Department of Health to sign off on them, which they did,” he says.
His teams had everything completed, and up and running, within a week to 10 days from start to finish. Tim says the rapid work was facilitated by his team of professionals from FIP, as well many sub-contractors, suppliers, and others.
“We had a lot of people,” he says. “We selected our best contractors that were most flexible and adept, where you could verbally describe what you were going to do, and they were right on board with it.”
He also appreciates the exceptional cooperation of officials who had to rapidly assist with permits, paperwork, and certifications required to safely open the facilities.
Tim orchestrated handling the requirements of each town at about the same time town halls were closing and going to remote services.
Tim says FIP Construction’s long-standing relationships with local governments and officials were useful in getting things done quickly.
“It’s a small state and we all know each other,” he says.
Tim, who resides in Stony Creek with his wife, Amy, a well-known local writer and expressive arts educator, headed out to each of the three project site towns every morning during the construction period to conduct any needed official business.
“I made loops,” says Tim of the multi-tasking effort. “I would coordinate in the morning: You get the building permits, you let the fire marshal know what’s going on...you get involved with the town to let them know this is emergency construction that’s going on. I called all of them up and I gave them a narrative of what we were doing, filled out the paperwork and said ‘Let’s go.’
“That’s when those personal relationships you’ve built can help,” he says. “You can pick up the phone and say, ‘Hey, I have this going. I’ll get some paperwork to you right away, but I just want to give you a heads up this is what’s going to happen.’”
Now that his group has turned over the keys to the temporary facilities, it’s back to work on regularly scheduled projects (with any office work done being remotely). That includes the project Tim began overseeing at Backus Hospital in January.
“My biggest challenge this January, when we started the project up at Backus Hospital, was moving four interior departments while they all remained in operation,” says Tim. “So it’s creating a new space for a department, moving them into it, renovating another space, moving them into that. That was going to take about a year to do. Then all of the sudden, bang, this comes up.”
The experience of seeing the three temporary facilities come together quickly, efficiently and expertly has only deepened Tim’s appreciation of the many talented professionals he encounters in his work.
“There were a lot of people—the whole [FIP] team [and] so many people who came together, on short notice and under extraordinary conditions, that did outstanding jobs,” Tim says. “I can’t say enough for all of the team members, within the managerial and the supervisory groups, and the subcontractors and suppliers that all responded, almost immediately, to what our needs were.”