Our Engineering team has been hard at work with the repairs to our electrical system in the Dazian building. When we had to move patients from Dazian this weekend because of an unrelated issue, they saw the opening to do these critical repairs, working around the clock to make it happen. Many others teams had a heavy lift in relocating patients, relocating staff, and ensuring our safety during this time. Thank you all!
Watching them work this week, I want to highlight our Engineering and IT teams. Their work often goes unseen, but is vital to everything we do every day.
We usually only think about our IT and facility needs when something goes wrong, but so much has to happen in the background to keep us up and running and ultimately, connected, to our community and to each other. During COVID-19, both of these teams had many additional challenges as we expanded to new units and opened our tent.
IT Teamwork
For IT, this meant getting mobile carts, printers, and access to applications up and running and connecting all of these pieces via cable or network, across our building, and in the case of our tent, outside, too.
The desktop team credits constant communication and collaboration across many departments for MSBI’s success during this time.
Elmer Romero on our desktop support team acknowledged that while they worked long hours for many days in a row, it was rewarding. “It feels good knowing that nurses can do their jobs saving lives because of our work.”
Our network, cabling, and telecomm teams also play an important role that often goes unseen during times of rapid change. Many of these teams had to suit up and head into areas near patients that required full PPE. They showed courage in addition to their partnership and dedication.
Shane Yeh and the network team reiterated that getting these new areas up and running was a true team effort. “There was a live coordination between all of us,” he said. I want to give a shout out to Reinetta Williams who helps keep these teams connected and informed about our complex needs.
Satish Itwaru, manager of the desktop team, agrees that it’s team effort. He also recalls that, like so many of us, they all had personal responsibilities and challenges that came up during the pandemic. They could lean on each other during those times.
“The support we give each other is there all the time, not just during a crisis. We can lean on each other always,” Satish said.
Master Engineers
Our engineers are some of the most adaptable, insightful, and humble people on our campus. They continually work miracles on our aging facility, keeping us safe and making sure we have what we need to do our work. As we saw this week, their work is often urgent and in this case, life-saving. We couldn’t do what we do without their willingness to go wherever they are needed.
Photos below of the sub-sub-basement, 60 feet below ground level where we made critical repairs this week.
They, too, had an incredible amount of work to do to prepare our facility for the surge during the last few months, getting formerly empty areas up and running. They responded to so many requests like creating additional negative pressure rooms and adding windows to units so patients could be more easily observed.
Here are just a few of our Engineering team members:
I don’t know what we would do without these colleagues. Thank you.