- So Project Quaker is a strategic partnership
between Penn Medicine, Wellness at Penn
and the Center for Public Health Initiatives.
And through that, what we want to do
or what we're doing is to deliver saliva-based tests
to students, faculty, staff
and the greater Penn community to keep everyone safe.
Through frequent testing
we can quickly identify individuals that are COVID positive
and then that way mitigate, or hopefully slow down exposures
for other individuals in our Penn community.
- [Benoit] So we're very fortunate
as an institution to have a health system of our own.
And in partnership with Penn Medicine,
the university was able to build
a testing infrastructure from scratch,
so that we knew reliably what would be available and when.
We didn't just repurpose something,
we bought new machines,
we partnered with Penn Medicine,
bought reagents and that's how we were able
to scale up our testing capacity internally,
rather than depend on the ebb and flow
on the commercial market of test kits available,
about delays potentially in results being sent back.
- [Robert] I was the lead project executive.
So I was in charge of getting the groups together
to pull both the university teams
and the Penn Medicine teams to ensure
that we had a complete plan from setting up the facilities,
working on the supply chains,
setting up and planning for the collection sites
and then actually building and fitting out the laboratory
so that we could actually perform the testing
once the students were able to come back on the campus.
So we were able to overcome all the constraints
around supply chain issues, personnel issues
as well as facilities and equipment availability.
You know, when I look back, a project like this
normally would take more than a year to implement.
So to have it from an idea
to go live in less than six months was truly amazing.
- A lot of individuals were selected,
they had different expertise,
different background from IT,
health, clinical, operations
to come on and make this happen.
I think it was really a great organic partnership.
You know, it was one of those things you really can't,
you don't know how well it's going to work
until you actually get into it
and sort of reallocations for myself,
the regional managers which all three regional managers
that report up to me come from athletics
whose work there translates really well
to what we do here.
The reallocations really made sense to get this up
and going as quickly as possible.
- My role, I work with all the external groups coming in
to utilize athletic space every day.
And so with that, we have some
of the larger events that can have anywhere
from 4,000 people upwards
of eight to 10,000 people that are coming to an event.
You know, what we're doing here is basically having an event
at six locations each day, where you have hundreds
potentially a couple thousand people coming to a location.
So very similar transition of,
we want to have good customer service
and run through everyone efficiently.
They're there for one thing
let's get them in, let's get them out,
make sure they understand how to get the results.
That similarity is definitely something, you know
you're coming to an event, you have a ticket
and you want to go and watch a game.
A lot of similarities in that standpoint.
- [Keith] My focus with Project Quaker
has been on the facility aspects
as well as the supply receiving and distribution.
I work with the site supervisors that we have hired
to ensure the facilities are prepped daily
addressing any issues, power outages, wind
in the tents has been a huge issue this semester,
we have received over a hundred pallets
of supplies that we are currently storing in the Palestra
and those supplies get distributed daily out to the sites.
So we have little small storage areas
at the sites that we keep a few days worth of supplies
but we restock those locations weekly
with the necessary PPE, testing tubes,
cleaning supplies and whatnot, to keep the operations going.
- When you come out on campus a beautiful day like today
you see students can sit at a table and enjoy a meal
and don't have to be sequestered to their rooms.
Then I think that's really gives us purpose.
It lets us see why we're doing this
and why we get up every day.
And that we make sure that we're going through all
of these things that we're not normally used to
to make sure that this is a success by everyone.
- It's knowing that what we're doing every day
is keeping the Penn community, surrounding community safe.
We're helping our students
and faculty continue to learn, continue to teach,
continue to grow as individuals on campus,
helping these kids realize their goals and dreams
of graduating from the University of Pennsylvania.
Getting to that graduation date safely
and being able to come back and be part of this community.
(upbeat music)