Delaware’s New Castle County teamed up with Delaware State University (DSU) to use five million dollars in CARES Act funding to establish a COVID-19 testing lab facility at the University’s Kirkwood Highway site. The lab provides less expensive, higher capacity testing capabilities in New Castle County, which has the highest COVID-19 positive rate of the state’s three counties. This critical investment in the lab established a diagnostic facility for inexpensive COVID-19 testing in the short-term. The lab can later be adapted to conduct different diagnostic testings for vendors such as New Castle County, ChristianaCare, and more when COVID-19 is finally eliminated. As a bonus, the new lab created 6-10 biosciences jobs.
As the construction manager on this 4,900 SF job, EDiS Company saw an opportunity to quickly bring better testing to the Delaware community as a whole. Given only five weeks to do so, the most extraordinary part of the project process was the extremely quick turnaround time. Project Manager Vinnie Colonna worked alongside the well established architect firm StudioJAED to see that demolition and then installation of all new mechanical equipment, walls, plumbing, flooring, ceilings, paint, and roof went off without a hitch. The project was officially completed on December 15 of 2020 while testing began in January 2021. The ribbon cutting took place January 29 to much fanfare. EDiS Company is proud to have built such an important structure for New Castle County and DSU during these difficult times. Our leadership and project teams will continue to Build What Matters as the needs of the Delaware community evolve.
The whole team knew that if we called each other we would all drop what we were doing, decisions had to be made and quickly. Everyone knew the rules and committed full-heartedly to the job. There was no other way we were getting this done otherwise and it worked out, right on schedule. – EDiS Project Manager Vinnie Colonna
