Overview

The NYC Health + Hospitals (HHC) is the largest public health care system in the United States. In New York City alone, HHC serves more than one million people annually spread between 70 different locations across the City’s five boroughs. Due to the unprecedented number of New Yorkers needing medical care because of the COVID-19 pandemic, HHC opened a temporary acute-care hospital, known as NYC Health + Hospitals/ Roosevelt Island Medical Center (RIMC), on Roosevelt Island. LiRo-Hill assisted HHC with providing emergency response services for the conversion of RIMC into a new, temporary 350-bed hospital, helping to meet the need for expansion to combat the spike in demand for COVID-19 treatment in New York City.

About the Project

This emergency project met the project’s 30-day duration. LiRo-Hill’s services on this project included environmental services, construction management, and coordination of multiple construction management teams and subcontractors, including FEMA documentation for reimbursement.

Project Challenges & Solutions

LiRo’s scope of work included but was not limited to the following:

• Develop a protocol for and maintain a project specific worker and construction staff sign-in and sign-out process. Collect sign-in/sign out sheets daily and have the HHC representative sign off on each sheet. Place sheets in order in a binder for use by the LiRo-Hill FEMA consultant. Track and follow up with any staff member or worker that did not sign in or out on a particular shift or day. Collect each workers ID badge at the end of each shift and re issue when the worker signs in the next day.
• Develop a ‘Project Specific Meeting’ sign- sheet to be used for all project meetings. File each sign in sheet in a binder and attach meeting minutes issued by Jacobs to the sign in sheet to use as supporting back up by LiRo-Hill’s FEMA consultant.
• Prepare and issue a daily summary report to the client detailing schedule status including real time forecasts on when and how many beds are available to accept patients, workforce data and critical issues and data on their resolution.
• Prepare and file LiRo-Hill daily reports to be utilized as supporting documentation by LiRo-Hill’s FEMA consultant. LiRo-Hill field personnel to include real time photographs, workforce data and a description of work activities.
• Attend all project meetings and provide input to assist in the timely competition of the project.
• Manage the activities of LiRo-Hill’s FEMA consultant in the processing of the contractors payment requisition. Provide all required documentation as required to assure that that all FEMA requirements are met. This includes but is not limited to daily sign in/ sign out sheets, all product and material invoices which are reviewed by Jacobs, all contractor daily reports and meeting minutes.
• Provide support to the client for any and all project close out requirements as required.

Outcome

The separate, new space was completed over a three-week span with assistance from unused parts of the campus of NYC Health + Hospitals. The Roosevelt Island Medical Center accommodated patients with and without COVID-19 who were stable and did not need ICU care. Most patients were transferred from NYC Health + Hospitals/ Bellevue, Elmhurst, Kings County, and Lincoln. The temporary hospital, which officially opened on March 27, was able to accommodate its first 100 patients that week. The additional beds opened the week of April 13th. This project was part of HHCs’ strategy to expand capacity system-wide to accommodate the surge in patients with COVID-19 by working to open 3,000 additional ICU beds by May 1.