I run biggest hospital in Scotland... but I pray we never treat a single patient
EXCLUSIVE: Boss of 1,000-bed facility built in just three weeks says: ‘This is our generation’s D-Day moment’
IT was born out of one of the most devastating human tragedies of modern times – and stands as a testament to the resilience and ingenuity of the Scottish people.
As the Covid-19 pandemic began to tighten its deadly grip on Britain, an army of workers were recruited to build a field hospital to cope with the anticipated ‘tsunami’ of people who would become seriously ill.
Just 21 days later, the NHS Louisa Jordan – named after the heroic First World War nurse who died during active service in Serbia in 1915 – was built in a feat of technology, engineering and human endeavour which may never be repeated.
Boasting 1,000 bed bays, a specialist pharmacy, cleaning facilities and a huge cylinder of oxygen that is enough to sustain all the patients in a 16-storey hospital, the facility is as miraculous as it is sobering.
Last night, the man in charge, medical director Dr Iain Wallace, recalled his own family’s military background to pay tribute to the thousands of people who have come together to make the hospital a reality.
He said: ‘Previous generations have had their opportunities. My father was a D-Day veteran and my grandfather was a machine gunner. Every generation has its time and people have stepped up to the plate.
‘Scotland’s largest hospital is the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital (QEUH) and we’ve got the same capability in terms of oxygen supply and number of beds. It’s an amazing engineering feat.
‘People saw China [where a coronavirus hospital was built in 14 days] and thought that couldn’t happen here. Well, it’s happened.’
But Dr Wallace added: ‘I may be in charge of this amazing hospital, but I’d be happy if I never have any patients.’
The building of Scotland’s coronavirus field hospital was an unprecedented response to a virus that has killed more than 159,000 people across the globe. It now rivals its Glasgow neighbour, the £842 million QEUH, in both capacity and capability.
Construction workers are set to finish the build in days – the site is expected to be signed off ready for use this week or next – and the Scottish Mail on Sunday gained exclusive access to one of the most remarkable engineering successes in Scotland’s history.
The transformation of the SEC Centre, part of the Scottish Event Campus and usually home to wedding fairs, campervan shows and corporate conferences, is considerable.
Where once excited gig-goers would huddle in anticipation outside the nearby SSE Hydro venue, white crosses now mark the floor at two-metre intervals to enforce social distancing measures.
Outside the NHS Louisa Jordan, workers in yellow high-vis jackets and hard hats have erected a huge marquee connecting the SSE Hydro and the exhibition centre. Soon, the tunnel will act as the medics’ entrance and exit to the field hospital – another attempt to shield the public from the spread of a killer virus.
Inside the hospital, builders, site managers and security guards dart across the concourse – the footfall in many ways resembling the usual level of traffic there during conference season.
But the scene is pulled into sharp focus when safety messages boom out over the PA system, reminding everyone to stay two metres apart.
It is an extraordinary operation, and Dr Wallace ‘never imagined’ he would be at the centre of it all.
He said: ‘You just have to do your best and take what comes.
‘It’s been very intense, this period of planning, as we’ve had to get it up and running quickly.’
His fast-paced lifestyle is a far cry from the comfortable retirement he was enjoying after hanging up his stethoscope at NHS Lanarkshire 18 months ago.
On Sunday, March 29, the father of two was sitting at his study desk flicking through emails when he accepted a call from Scotland’s then Chief Medical Officer, Dr Catherine Calderwood.
Until that point, he had been working on a few medical projects in his spare time, drawing on his 20 years’ experience as a medical director at various health boards.
For the most part, Dr Wallace had been expecting a quiet few months in lockdown with his GP wife and West Highland terrier, Archie.
So when he was asked to take on one of the biggest challenges of his life, he was initially filled with excitement at the opportunity. But despite being a time-served health chief, the task of building a hospital with 1,000 beds – the same medical specification as the QEUH – and the capability to turn into an intensive care facility at a moment’s notice, was also a little daunting.
Dr Wallace said: ‘It was a new venture. There was trepidation of the unknown. That’s the natural response as to how to do this – the timescales were short.
‘I have been involved in hospital builds before – the new children’s hospital in Glasgow, Forth Valley Royal [in Larbert, Stirlingshire], so it was familiar to me. But since I’ve retired, the 60-hour weeks have been less, so it clearly ramped up my metabolic rate again.
‘Very quickly it went from 0-60 miles per hour.’
First, the Army’s Royal Engineers were called in to help plan the build and carry out a feasibility survey of the space.
Once confirmed as the site of Scotland’s first field hospital, the SEC Centre was named after Sister Louisa Jordan, who died on active service while part of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals for Foreign
Services. Soon, the heavy lifting began, with the help of up to 750 contractors and NHS staff who have been working on site each day for three weeks.
By April 10, 248,000 square feet of flooring – an area bigger than three Hampden Park pitches – had been laid and partitions between the beds had been erected, creating more than 1,000 bays.
Meanwhile, more than 8,000 pieces of medical equipment were brought in, 22 miles of network cabling were laid for the nurse call system, and 84 miles of cabling for lighting and power sockets were installed. A team of 400 people transformed the venue’s 108,000 sq ft Room Four – which has played host to gigs by artists such as Sir Rod Stewart – into a 516-bed unit.
They also set up a pharmacy room and cleaning facilities.
Dr Wallace said: ‘I’ve worked on flu pandemic planning before, all the paper exercises, but this is the real thing. After all the practising and practices, it’s different. There’s something about when you’re
facing an extreme rare event, people pull together.’
On Thursday, the first set of clinical volunteers was brought into the building for an induction.
They are among tens of thousands of Scots to have stepped up to help the country fight the coronavirus pandemic.
Dr Wallace is most proud of those volunteers and the professionals working in the NHS.
He said: ‘I feel absolute pride, not in me, but with the collective. It’s all about the collective effort.
‘People with very high-powered jobs before they retired are happy to come back and be asked to do things that they were very capable of doing but that they wouldn’t have done because they were working at a strategic level.
‘People are not conscious of their previous status. They just come and do whatever is required. This brings the best out of people.’
Now, only the finishing touches are to be done on the building.
It is understood the NHS Louisa Jordan will undergo a deep clean before it can be opened for patients who need to recover after being discharged from hospital.
Unlike the NHS Nightingale hospital in London, it will not initially cater for intensive care patients, although Dr Wallace offered an assurance that the capacity is there to adapt some spaces for ICU beds if needed.
He said: ‘We’ve got a capability, but we don’t have any ICU ventilators or beds here because that’s I feel absolute pride. It’s all about the collective effort not what we’re planning to do. If the need were to do that then we have got the oxygen supply, air supply and the suction to set up for that if necessary.
‘It’s the same oxygen system as the QEUH – it will probably be able to deliver more here because it’s a simple system.
‘They have a stack of about 15 or 16 storeys whereas here we’ve got four halls, so there are fewer bends and pipes.’
Despite the immense uncertainty that coronavirus has brought to families and professionals up and down the country, for Dr Wallace, the only way to cope is to remain positive.
He said: ‘At the end of the day, we don’t really know how it’s going to pan out. You can look at China, you can look at South Korea, you can look at Italy, but our population could be different in the way it socially distances, for example.
‘If you dwell on the negatives, it brings it home to you. Through challenges and difficulty, keeping a positive focus and demeanour is an important thing to do.’
He added: ‘It is very, very challenging work that NHS frontline staff in intensive care units are doing, but there’s a camaraderie there.
‘You’ve got to look at what good you’re doing as well as the tragedies that occur.’