During the lockdown in Ireland some construction sectors had limited sites open however as we work in a number of essential sectors such as Healthcare, Life Science, Manufacturing, Infrastructure and Maintenance these projects remained live. In fact, we completed upgrade works in most major hospitals throughout the country which were needed as a direct result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Ensuring operations run smoothly for our frontline staff was and is a critical step in our battle against COVID-19.

Jones Engineering was awarded the HSE O₂ Monitoring Project where the scope was to deliver visibility of oxygen usage to the HSE during high demand situations throughout 29 acute hospitals nationally. The purpose of the project was to provide the HSE and the hospitals with the demand capacity of their oxygen distribution system. This information was vital in allowing informed decisions to be made about oxygen delivery to the patients who needed it most.

Our dedicated small projects teams installed a monitoring system across all hospitals which included a 4G Telemetry system, Pressure Transmitters, cloud-based service, remote monitoring of the VIE through CCTV, flowmeters and BMS (Building Management System) integration throughout the country.

We were the PSCS (Project Supervisor Construction Stage) for the project and it was our responsibility to lead a collaborative approach between the HSE, ARUP and ourselves. This involved exceptionally high levels of coordination of multiple teams and multiple 3rd party providers ensuring all were lined up to play their part in the project delivery.

Conducting a highly critical national project during COVID-19 lockdown measures brought unique challenges in terms of securing the supply chain, ensuring the safety of the installation team and coordinating the eight different teams so that there was no overlap and any impact on one team would not affect another team or location.

The first installations were started in September last year. The priority of location was a constant moving obstacle, based on the surges of COVID-19, meaning the team had to work hard maintaining flexibility of schedules and locations and responding accordingly. Despite these challenges the project took only 9 of the 12 weeks allowed to perform the installation. All sites were operational and visibility was achieved across the HSE within this timeframe.