Our vaccination hub opened at Queen’s Hospital last week and was only made possible thanks to the hard work of several teams and countless colleagues across our Trust. We’re so proud of them for making it happen so quickly that we want to give as many of them the spotlight as we can.

Read on for our Director of Estates and Facilities, Steve Last’s (pictured) take on his team’s involvement (did someone say ’setting a precedent…?’)

“The main thing I’ll take away from this is the collaboration and teamwork involved. It didn’t stretch to just one department, it was several. There was so much to consider.

Our involvement started when I was told the Education Centre was going to be our hub, and let’s make it happen. The first thing I did was sit down with the team to map it out, we had to think about everything; how many vaccine pods we needed; having areas for welcome, check in, jabbing, and observation; electricity; signage; security and loads more.

It was a great opportunity to utilise lots of different elements of the Estates team, and I’m so proud of what they achieved within the short timescale we had. From the moment I was asked to do this, I didn’t have any doubt we could make it happen.

We’re a reactive team and, like the rest of our Trust and the NHS, everyone has stepped up during the pandemic, going above and beyond. Extra hours, weekend work, they’ve been doing whatever it takes to make it happen.

It was really exciting to be involved in the hub as it’s so critical in our fight against Covid-19. It’s a major part of how we can get back to any form of normality.

It’s a credit to everyone involved that we all pulled together and delivered it. My only concern now is that we might have set a precedent!”

How Ben Mansfield helped behind the scenes to get our Vaccination Hub built