Calgary firms striving to help with health-care space crunch

With the spread of COVID-19 expected to push hospitals to the limit across North America and around the globe, Calgary companies are reaching out to help relieve the space crunch quickly.

Sprung Instant Structures this week sent a 8,250-square-foot hospital structure by rush shipment to Burlington, Ont., where it will be filled with 100 medical beds.

The company, which makes tension fabric buildings, has also partnered with locally owned Falkbuilt, to offer rapidly built medical facilities that could be set up in a parking lot if needed.

Calgary's DIRTT, which makes prefabricated modular spaces, is speaking with health-care specialists about how it can turn sports arenas into health-care facilities. It's also collaborating with ATCO on a medical reconfiguration of ATCO's traditional rental trailers.

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ATCO, meanwhile, is setting up temporary housing facilities in Nevada and Louisiana in helping with the response to COVID-19, and establishing medical hubs in the vicinity of hospitals in Australia.

Health authorities are making efforts to free-up space to accommodate an influx of patients with COVID-19, in some cases turning to places like convention centres for help.

While having enough medical professionals to deal with the pandemic is top of mind, experts have also warned that Canadian hospitals have limited space and capacity.

Even before its shipment to Burlington, Sprung was already sending out structures to be used for public testing of the virus, including drive-through testing facilities, mostly to the United States.

But the greatest need may be for additional medical space. 

"We want to help," said Jim Avery, vice-president at Sprung. 

"How many needs are there? That's a moving target, literally by the minute. But we're shipping structures out daily for a variety of needs."

The company says it is talking to hundreds of parties all over the world that require emergency facilities. 

By working together with Falkbuilt, Sprung can provide the exterior structure while its partner creates the infrastructure needed inside to quickly create an operational medical facility, Avery said.

Sprung has built a long list of facilities for the military, oil and gas companies, churches, athletic organizations and disaster recovery operations. It famously built a Tesla factory for Elon Musk.

Falkbuilt, founded by entrepreneur Mogens Smed more than a year ago, is already established in making made-to-order interiors for the health-care sector using materials that can later be repurposed or reconfigured.

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Speaking at his Calgary manufacturing facility last month, Smed pointed to the components for 60 intensive care units and a nurses' station, all part of an order bound for Kuwait.

"They'll install these 60 ICUs in less than two weeks in their entirety," Smed said.

The order is tied to a new hospital and not related to COVID-19, but he points to it to illustrate what they can do.

How this Calgary company helps health authorities with their COVID-19 medical space crunch

5 years ago

Duration 1:22

Falkbuilt Ltd. is talking to health officials around the world for rapid-build medical spaces and intensive care units that come together quickly after customers approve a digital sneak peek.

"A 10,000-square-foot space with our type of process, you'll have it completely fitted out in a maximum of three to four weeks," Smed said, adding the firm is fielding calls from as far as Africa but also the U.S. and Canada.

ATCO said it's in discussions with public agencies and corporations at home and abroad on helping them with structures and support services.

"ATCO has a long history of  supporting emergencies," said Adam Beattie, president of ATCO Structures and Logistics, in a statement to CBC News.

"In Structures, we have a rental fleet available and production capacity to respond quickly to accommodation needs and also to supply facilities such as those that have been used as medical support buildings."

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ATCO has set up a 300-person temporary housing facility in Nevada and a slightly smaller one in Louisiana. In Australia, it deployed 40 units to be used as medical hubs in the vicinity of hospitals.

DIRTT's CEO Kevin O'Meara says it's been involved in building health-care facilities, like patient rooms, for the past decade.

Now, with the pandemic expected to fill up hospitals, the company is demonstrating how it can transform places like a basketball court into a medical facility or set up patient rooms on a football field.

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"We can do patient rooms, we can do intensive care units," he said.

"For this purpose, some of what we've done is to create very quickly some off-the-shelf solutions in terms of how you could convert a basketball court or a sports arena into a high-acuity, health-care facility."

O'Meara said it's a unique situation, but also gratifying.

"Our people are really pulling together," he said.