Teamwork Leads to Quick Deployment of COVID-19 Testing Facility on Central Coast

“Thanks for your team’s work on our many lab projects. Not sure you know, but we’ve developed one of the most robust COVID testing platforms in CA. Your team helped make that happen.”-Mark Allen, Chief Operations Officer, Marian Regional Medical Center, Santa Maria, CA

When a community is in need, it’s all hands on deck. Marian Regional Medical Center in Santa Maria, California needed to move rapidly and efficiently to add new equipment to process COVID-19 tests in its microbiology lab. The Studio Design Group, Architects, LLC team jumped on board, putting our decades of healthcare design and OSHPD hospital construction expertise to work.

The project equipped the lab with medical refrigeration equipment for reagent storage and the BD Max System, a fully-integrated, automated platform that performs nucleic acid extraction and real-time PCR providing results for up to 24 patient samples across multiple syndromes in approximately three hours.

This project was unique due to the compressed timeline, which required construction and the permitting process to be done concurrently. As the construction team got to work, we kept them in the loop as we navigated the approval process, created construction documents, and worked with the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development (OSHPD) to get quick permit approval.

Swift coordination between Marian Regional Medical Center, contractors at Alan Roinestad Construction & Management, Inc., and our SDG team allowed the Central Coast to quickly begin getting COVID-19 test results.

It is our honor and pleasure to work with industry leaders and contribute to efforts that save lives in our community.