Modular interior manufacturer DIRTT has recognized Lerdahl as a partner of the year for their work on the 2020 STAAT Mod project in Georgia. The Lerdahl team went above and beyond in 2020, securing a critical and unprecedented build to drastically improve a timeline when time saved meant lives saved.
The end-user, a Hospital in Lawrenceville, Georgia, sits in the northeastern suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia, where Covid levels have remained a “red zone” for much of the Covid-19 pandemic. As the first hospital in the Southeast to install STAAT Mod (Strategic, Temporary, Acuity-Adaptable Treatment) units to care for COVID-19 patients, Northside is fulfilling a long-needed gap in their patient capacity.
“The Atlanta region is experiencing rapid growth, and, even before the COVID-19 pandemic, we began looking at opportunities to increase our bed capacity and flexibility to handle an influx of patients,” said Debbie Mitcham, CEO of the end-user. “In less than four months, we’ve been able to do what would normally take us 15 months, and this investment enables us to provide a quality and a durable solution to serve our community throughout the uncertain curve of this infection.”
The innovative and highly engineered STAAT MOD concept conforms to hospital quality standards and easily flexes to provide traditional inpatient capacity or critical care. STAAT MOD operations allow for Airborne Infection Isolation Rooms (AIIR) that provide increased safety for both patients and caregivers. The acuity-adaptable rooms installed at Northside are a mix of critical care ICU, AIIR, and lower acuity spaces such as Step Down, Medical-Surgical, and Observation rooms.
Speed without compromising quality
The STAAT Mod has an excellent life span, making it durable enough to support a long-term hospital strategy, and is fully code compliant. The added space allows Northside to care for various patients without sacrificing clinical quality, safety, efficiency, or any patient’s dignity.
For Lerdahl, the project results are genuinely astonishing and rewarding. A 71-bed modular hospital, designed and built in a matter of weeks. This type of high acuity project would typically take many months, if not years. This project serves the immediate need to treat patients during a pandemic and has become the foundation for a robust modular partnership with general contractor BOLDT.
STAAT Mod, a volumetric hybrid modular solution, incorporates DIRTT solutions for the interior build-out of a steel frame box designed to fit on the back of a semi-truck and moved from the contractor’s fabrication shop to wherever the hospital location may be (in this case, about 900 miles).
Components include walls, door frames, millwork, flex gas, power, and networks.
These Critical Care patient units met Airborne Infection requirements, FGI Guidelines, and local code requirements.
“This became more than a project,” stated Christina Robotka, DIRTT Healthcare Specialist for Lerdahl. “It grew into a mission to hone our expertise in modular construction to passionately support saving lives during a pandemic. Seeing the capability of a full modular healthcare opportunity come to fruition is truly rewarding.”
For more on this project, please view the case study.Â
