Vote for Engineering Excellence during COVID-19

Why vote for the COVID Alliance?

In March 2020, a rallying call was made to Ireland’s engineering community to support the Irish health service in its response to the COVID-19 emergency. Over 50 project organisations responded and PM Group’s team were honoured to be part of what became the COVID Alliance Group. 

This community of engineers provided critical engineering  solutions, suitability assessments, construction supports and many other skills. Services were provided on a primarily pro bono basis.

The work of the Group included:

• a review of medical gas infrastructure in more than 30 of the country’s acute hospitals
• subsequent capacity delivery projects – for example,  servicing the Citywest stepdown facility with medical gas infrastructure and upgrades to five hospitals to increase or de-bottleneck oxygen supplies and medical air systems

“The work of the entire engineering community in Ireland has to be highly commended for the incredible response they made to this crisis. Our own team in PM Group supported with the redeployment of oxygen tanks, surveying hospitals and technical advice. As an organisation, we were proud to help and absolutely overwhelmed by the numbers of PM Group people volunteering their services and expertise,” said  Anthony O’Rourke, Operations Director Ireland, UK & Europe, PM Group.

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About the COVID Alliance Group

Established in March 2020 in response to the COVID-19 crisis, the COVID Alliance comprises of over 50 project partners from key Irish engineering and manufacturing sectors who came together to volunteer their services to the Health Service Executive (HSE). This informal grouping of organisations who provided services primarily on a pro bono basis was organised into a series of volunteer work streams, all of which were focused on meeting the needs of the crisis.

With each project partner aligned to a work stream based on their specific capabilities, the Alliance’s expertise was central to the development of a number of healthcare supports and initiatives. This included a review of medical gas infrastructure in more than 30 of the country’s acute hospitals, and subsequent capacity delivery projects, such as servicing the Citywest stepdown facility with medical gas infrastructure and upgrades to five hospitals to increase or de-bottleneck oxygen supplies and medical air systems. With a diverse project team, the Alliance has also enabled the servicing of temporary clinical facilities, including the design of temporary reception wards for county hospitals.

The Alliance was also central to the scaling up of the reagent supply chain to address shortages that were impacting national testing capabilities, commercialisation support of a rapid home-testing system and the design of locally produced goggles for medical personnel, for which an order for over a million units is in process with the HSE.