During the Covid-19 pandemic, there was a huge demand for testing capacity. The current testing capacity was around 500 tests per day at the start of the Covid outbreak. However, the demand for testing capacity increased rapidly and there was soon a need for millions of tests per week. To achieve this, the government signed contracts with commercial companies that were allowed to build mega labs with a testing capacity of up to 100,000 tests per day.
With our knowledge, we were able to contribute to the setting up of a new XL covid test laboratory with the aim of building an operational laboratory within a month, after which it could be scaled up per week to ultimately be able to perform 75,000 tests per day.
We got to work right away, mapping all the needs and helping to structure this crisis team. In doing so, we installed cabling with our partners for 7.5 km throughout the building in a short period of time, installed equipment to analyze tests, and furnished offices to allow 100 employees to do their work.
To make this possible, we used a few permanent employees who were present for the entire project and a whole team of flexible professionals. For example, several employees were present for a few days to quickly solve problems with their expertise, so that delays were never an issue and millions of tests could be performed by this XL covid laboratory.
