SERVPRO & LACI Working Together

7/6/2021 (Permalink)

Draft LACI New Article 6/25/21

During the past 15 months, the Covid-19 pandemic has affected the entire planet in so many ways, from the most profound losses to examples of great heroics.  We have lived through a once in a century global disaster.

In early 2020, during the first months of the Pandemic when hospitals in Los Angeles County began to fill with infected patients, given the scale of the emergency there was a realization that many medical institutions were going to run out of supplies.  

Among the shortages, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) was identified as critical to First Responders who themselves would be at great personal risk unless they had the proper safety equipment.  LA County Leadership was called upon to help figure out how to get PPE to these heroes who would be so critical to saving lives and controlling the outbreak.  

One of the solutions was to get help from organizations who had production capabilities and expertise to make up the shortfall in the required PPE.  Among the organizations who stepped up was a Non-Profit called the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator (LACI).   Provided with philanthropic donations, LACI proposed to mobilize and coordinate in-house design staff, raw material suppliers, access production facilities, and enlist out-of-work people as elements of a Face-shield production program.  

The goal was to produce and deliver tens of thousands of medical grade face-shields over the months that these devices were expected to be in short supply. This was not an easy commitment to deliver on.  There were many hundreds of man hours invested in the up-front design, material selection, prototyping, and the piece-part manufacturing phase.  Following the development work, approval of the final product was needed before production could even start.  Through all of this, the clock was ticking and the cost from delays in delivery could honestly be measured in lives-at-risk.

Fast forward to June of 2021.  The Pandemic and personal protection protocols in many parts of the country, including Southern California, is starting to recede and life is creeping towards to a new normal.   The LACI organization has fulfilled their commitment to LA County First Responders, producing and delivering approximately 125,000 medical face- shields designed for use by doctors, nurses, and other care providers.  An outstanding accomplishment, not just in applying technology and project management, but certainly for the humanitarian good that was done.

The Leadership staff of LACI and all of the supporting material suppliers, designers, engineers, production, supervision, and other non-profit entities that contributed to this effort can all take pride in knowing that they were part of something really important, something bigger than themselves, an effort that has given every member of the team the right to take some credit for making it safer for First Responders to continue saving lives during this epic time.  

As part of the logistics for delivering many of these faceshields to medical centers all over Los Angeles County, SERVPRO of Glendora would like to extend our sincere gratitude and respect to the LACI organization and all the parties who helped to change the course of what would certainly have cost even more in human lives without their involvement.

SERVPRO of Glendora/San Dimas is a building and property restoration business which exists to help home and business owners recover from disasters that have impacted their lives.  Over the years, we’ve assisted thousands of people confronting personal calamities that require a helping hand.  We pride ourselves on making the recovery from property losses a little easier by providing quality restoration services and giving back control to those affected by disaster.