Engineering firm rallies around the Lafayette healthcare community

Ava Perego

For oncology nurse Arielle Landry, masks were never hard to come by, until March 2020.

She had not seen a standard N-95 mask since COVID-19 made its way to Louisiana last month.

Now, she finds herself faced with the choice of wearing a homemade fabric mask that risks

carrying infectious particles into cancer patient rooms, or wearing nothing at all.

“They’re better than nothing,” Landry said. “Sometimes I feel like the material part can

hold more grossness than the other masks. Honestly it seems more like a trend now, but it is

better than nothing.”

After working for Lafayette General Hospital in Lafayette, LA for over two years, the first

day protocol required Landry to wear a mask all day was April 6, 2020, almost one month after

the first case of COVID-19 was identified in Louisiana. The delay was not because of ignorance,

but because of a lack in supplies Landry says.

“We are limited on my floor with the N-95 masks and face shields,” she said. “They are

making sure ICU, ER and the two COVID floors have them, but I feel that we should have PPE no

matter where we are in the hospital.”

Due to the lack of supplies available to health care workers at Lafayette General, the

hospital board, in conjunction with the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, reached out to local

engineering firm, Pelican Engineering, about constructing face shields.

 After reviewing clinically approved and tested designs by the National Institute of

Health, engineers at Pelican Engineering set to work to design an around the clock schedule

that would allow them to create 600 face shields within one week.

“They were working on getting higher volume manufacturers to make them,” said

electrical engineer Nolan John Edwards. “It takes a few weeks to produce the tools and molds

needed to produce thousands of them. They said, ‘Look, we need enough to serve as a buffer

until we can produce tens of thousands of masks and face shields in volume.’”

Edwards said that his small office of engineers took on the project as quickly as possible

by pulling plastic and metal supplies readily available to them, and creating a schedule that

allowed them to print masks from midnight to closing time the following day for one week.

To ensure sanitation, one person at a time used a 3D printer to print headbands and

detachable face shields from spools of PLA Plastic. They created 12 masks an hour, and would

switch out workers every five hours. Shift one began at midnight and went until 5 a.m., and

then another engineer from the firm would come and work for the next five hours.

This technique enabled Pelican Engineering to quickly and efficiently meet the need of

Lafayette General Hospital. Edwards said they printed the face shields for upwards of 60 hours

straight until they reached 600.

Olivia Perego also works in the oncology unit at Lafayette General, and although her

floor only has two face shields available to them currently, she is grateful for the effort the

community is putting into taking care of the healthcare community.

“You don’t realize how many people, resources and products it takes to make all of this

happen,” Perego said. “Whenever people can put it together in such a short amount of time,
it’s very amazing and I am just in awe of how wonderful people can be, especially during this

time.”

The designs Pelican Engineering used to design the headbands and plastic face shields

can be found on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services National Institutes of

Health website. Perego says that these masks and face shields, though not a permanent fix, are

helping ease the anxieties that come with working in healthcare during this time.

“We only have two on my floor, but they’re definitely helpful.” Perego said. “They cover

your fabric mask all the way down to your chest, so if we have to reuse that, it’s nice to have

something protecting it to ensure that nothing is contaminating or soiling your mask. It’s a good

protective measure to extend the life of your fabric mask.”

Edwards says that though they have not received a public thanks or direct feedback

from this hospital board itself, that the point of their donation was not to be recognized, but to

help their community in need.

“We didn’t go and advertise saying, ‘Hey, we are doing this for you,’” Edwards said.

“That is not what this is about. This is about doing our public service duty to help out those in

need, because we are able to.”