Expediting delivery to fight Covid-19

When it comes to tackling a national health emergency, speed is imperative. Speed of thought. Speed in decision-making. And speed of delivery.

That’s why, in 2020, in response to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, the UK Government launched an ambitious programme to significantly scale up the nation’s testing and diagnostics facilities, to support the mass population testing programme.

Having successfully delivered the Nightingale Hospital at ExCeL in London at the height of the pandemic, a multidisciplinary team, led by Mace, took on the challenge of supporting the Department of Health and Social Care and then the UK Health Security Agency, in delivering an ultra-high throughput Covid-19 testing laboratory. The Rosalind Franklin Laboratory is the result of that partnership – and a new benchmark within pharma and life sciences.

The new facility deploys ePCR technology to enable fast and accurate diagnostics and has processed over eight million samples since opening in June 2021, playing a significant role in allowing the reopening of the UK economy and society, supporting the country in moving forward from the pandemic. 

Through collaboration, an expedited design process, and implementing Modern Methods of Construction, the team successfully compressed the schedule from a typical 2.5 years to just nine months, from initial involvement to the first live tests being processed.

Our approach was also designed such that we were able to progressively hand over individual lab lines while construction of the remaining lab lines continued. In October 2021, the facility processed its one millionth PCR test - less than 12 weeks after validation of the first lab line.