‘Trying to make a difference’

CASE STUDY 1 VENTILATORS

AT THE beginning of the Covid 19 crisis, Britain’s hospitals had 8,000 ventilators.

They now have 11,500 - of which more than 1,ooo are from the Prime Minister’s Ventilator Challenge.

Babcock International is one of those companies which has stepped up to the challenge

The company based in London has offices, specialist training facilities, dockyards, equipment testing centres and research and development facilities across England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales.

Chris Spicer is project manager for the ventilator challenge at the company He said: “On Monday March 16 there was an email asking if there was any way Babcock could provide support. By the Friday we had a working prototype. The weekend was pretty busy preparing for a

CHALLENGING TIMES: Chris Spicer is project manager for Babcock International. presentation to the government on the Monday to propose what our offering would be, how it would meet the requirement specifications, our plan for building it, the time frame and also the volumes we could achieve.

“People worked round-the-clock to get it sorted and have continued to. We’ve used innovative, bespoke ways of

moving forward. Some of the machine companies we use for submarine parts now make plastic valves for the ventilators. We all want to help in any small way we can. We all have relatives in vulnerable groups and that’s a driver – thinking if that was your father or your granny in that scenario how could you make that little bit of difference.”