During the COVID-19 pandemic, Trillium Health Partners deployed a temporary Pandemic Response Unit on the grounds of the Mississauga Hospital in Mississauga, ON. The hospital is home to one of the province’s COVID-19 assessment centers, but built the additional 80-bed unit in their parking lot to increase treatment capacity. This emergency pandemic situation required the facility to be built quickly, while still maintaining safety standards, so the hospital turned to Tate for their flooring needs.

Parking lots are a popular location for temporary medical response facilities because of the open space and access to water, sewer and electric services. The problem with parking lots, however, is that they are usually not level across the entire lot to allow for drainage. This creates a safety hazard for wheeled patient beds and electrical equipment. Raised access floors were an ideal solution for leveling the Mississauga Hospital grounds. The installers on this project adjusted the height of the floor’s pedestals to create a level surface and sturdy foundation for the facility.

With access floors installed, the hospital was able to utilize the underfloor plenum for cable management. Power services were routed under the floor to be directly delivered wherever it was needed throughout the facility. This helps create a safer working environment by reducing tripping hazards and keeping all electrical services contained. It also gives the facility the ability to reroute these services as patient numbers fluctuate and treatment areas are reconfigured.

Due to the rapid nature of this project, timing was a key piece in the successful deployment of the unit. The Tate team worked day and night to deliver materials just 72 hours after the product order was initiated. We also adjusted our typical installation schedule to accommodate the weekend delivery. One of the benefits of access flooring is the ease of installation and small install team required. This limits the number of people on site at one time, so the team was still able to follow CDC guidelines during installation. Our team, along with the hospital’s project team and other manufacturers, remained agile and responsive to quickly adapt to the project requirements and was able to successfully deploy this rapid medical response facility in time to treat patients.

“The top priority for this project was speed of installation. From start to finish we were able to build this facility in just two weeks, and Tate played an important role in that success. The ability to use raised floors to level the parking lot created a safe foundation for the rest of the facility and gave us the added benefit of using the underfloor space for service distribution. Sprung Structures is looking forward to working with Tate again on future projects.”
—Tom Lloyd, Regional Business Development Manager, Sprung Structures