The Challenge

When a chemical, biological, or hazardous materials incident sends contaminated patients to a hospital, that hospital becomes a first receiver, and it needs a place to decontaminate patients before they enter the building. The VA Medical Center in Lexington, Kentucky needed a dedicated emergency decontamination facility on its campus to fill that role.

The facility had to be purpose-built for decontamination and fixed in place as a permanent part of the medical center. A fixed decontamination facility stays ready on site at all times; without the setup a portable decontamination facility requires once an emergency is already underway.

The Solution

In 2014, Modular Genius delivered a 192-square-foot modular decontamination building to the VA Medical Center in Lexington, fabricated off site and fixed in place on the campus as a permanent hospital decontamination facility. The medical decontamination building gave the medical center a dedicated patient decontamination facility as part of its emergency preparedness capabilities.

Twelve years later, the medical center came back to Modular Genius for its replacement. For a building that exists for the moments that matter most, being asked back after twelve years is feedback we do not take lightly.

For VA Medical Centers, hospitals, military installations, government agencies, emergency management organizations, and private companies planning for disaster response, this project shows how modular construction can rapidly establish, replace, or expand decontamination and emergency response capabilities. A prefabricated decontamination building arrives purpose-built and can be fixed in place permanently, supporting mass casualty, CBRN, and HAZMAT decontamination along with chemical and biological emergency response planning, without the lead time of a site-built facility.