A steady supply of oxygen
Critical to the functioning of both field hospitals was a steady and secure supply of oxygen. In Stockholm, plans originally called for supplying oxygen to 200 intensive care unit (ICU) beds, but was quickly scaled up to 600 beds. In Gothenburg, not only was each ICU bed to be supplied with oxygen, but Linde needed to also have capacity in place to supply an additional 50 beds should the need arise.
But Linde rose to the challenge by quickly assembling and deploying a cross-functional team to address the oxygen supply needs of the healthcare systems in Sweden’s two largest cities.
“It’s amazing that we were able to put together a team of people from Healthcare, Customer Engineering Services (CES), Medical Technical Services (MTS), and Bulk Distribution and get everything in place in such a short time,” says Bengt Sjöberg, Linde’s QI Engineering manager Sweden.
Ready within days
In Stockholm, a 15-person Linde team of experts in Healthcare, CES, and Bulk Distribution was deployed to install two oxygen tanks and four vaporizers, including stabilizers. A military convoy with equipment arrived on March 25th and the first tank was in place that evening. Welders continued with the assembly and the work was finished by March 27th, making the hospital ready to accept patients on March 30th.
“What normally takes three or four months to build, we managed to complete in three days,” Anders Eriksson of Ersta Hospital who served as a project manager, told local newspaper Mitt i.