On Saturday 21^st March, NHS Chief Executive Sir Simon Stevens announced that a new hospital would soon open, to provide support for thousands of patients with coronavirus.

The NHS Nightingale Hospital, London, would be based at the ExCeL conference centre in East London; and would initially provide up to 500 beds equipped with ventilators and oxygen. The capacity would then continue to increase, potentially up to several thousand beds, should they be required.

NHS clinicians and managers would work with military planners and engineers to create, equip, staff and open the hospital – and Alpine Works was asked to play a crucial part.

Our works was to to deliver the power, containment and lighting to 2,000 bed bays and approximately 120 nursing stations – as well as ancillary areas and a mortuary.

As well as the electrical work, our mechanical team would install ventilation works and the copper piping for medical gas supplies – oxygen – to be delivered to the bed heads. We would be supported by the Army, working closely with other suppliers.

The operation swiftly shaped up like a well-oiled machine. We were required to fit ten power sockets for each bed, of which five would be on a generator backup – twenty thousand in total. Long benches were set up, and as the materials came in, a team of 10-12  at each bench cut the trunking, fitted the boxes, assembled the wiring, fitted the sockets and then fitted them to the bedheads along with the lighting.

We followed immediately behind the teams setting up the partitioning – and immediately behind us came the sanitary cleaning teams, who set up large plastic medical screens: a non-stop process.