What was it like setting up an entire ICU in a bus in just four weeks?

RESPONDING TO CRISIS

Okay."How was it possible to install a complete Intensive Care Unit in a bus in just four weeks?" It was an emotional story, and it raises a couple of questions:How does a bus manager even consider installing an ICU?

Here's what happened: It was in the middle or at the beginning of the Covid crisis in March 2020.

Looking back, it was a dreadful period.Everyone was confused.

At Daimler, we had already decided to shut down the factories in April,and send employees home to reduce the risk of infection.

I was one of the few who continued going to the company every day,to keep the business running as best as possible and to be there present.

One day, the German Red Cross sent a request to our address.

The request was as follows: The German Red Cross had the idea, or the need, to require a high-capacity vehicle in which to transport the largest number of intensive care patients simultaneously.

Why?Hospitals were overwhelmed, ICUs were full.Doctors no longer knew what to do with all those patients.

They had to relocate them to other hospitals.But if they used ambulances, an intensive care doctor had to travel and there weren't enough.

The request came to us.It was passed on to me. I told them we could help.

We found a suitable high-capacity vehicle.It was a Mercedes-Benz Zitaro intercity bus from our inventory.

And I put it at their disposal.My colleague, the director, found twelve other professionals and he asked them if they could come to the company's production site during Covid to provide support.

And within three or four weeks, together with the German Red Cross,we built a mobile ICU,in which four intensive care patients could be provided with assisted breathing.

It was an unbelievable challenge.And the fact that we were able to overcome it in just three or four weeks was made possible by Covid, because we were in a crisis.

Production had stopped.And we, completely detached from the normal production processes,were able to implement very manual and unsophisticated aspects,but they had to be carried out under time pressure,because we wanted, as a company, to get that ICU vehicle on the road as soon as possible to help patients.

That was an experience where I thought to myself,"Alright, we did it.

We managed to develop and create a product, in difficult times,that can save lives, with our colleagues from the German Red Cross,that the media would naturally respond positively to and that has made the entire workforce feel proud." When we finished the product by the end of April,we made it available to the Red Cross for nine months at no cost,so that it could be put into service.

And, thanks to my salesperson's genes, of course I felt the urge to commercialize that product, and by the end of 2020,I managed to have the federal state of Baden-Württemberg purchase that first bus.

In the first meetings, we already closed the deal for a second ICU vehicle.

It was built during the first half of 2021,and we put it into service.

Therefore, with our products,we were able to contribute to saving human lives during the Covid-19 pandemic.