UAB Environmental Services staff on the pandemic frontline

The doctors, nurses and other health care workers at UAB have been praised — and with good reason — for their heroic efforts at the frontline of the COVID-19 pandemic.

But there’s another group of UAB workers on the frontline: the 530 employees of Environmental Services (EVS) who clean and sanitize the patient care and public areas at UAB Hospital and related facilities.

“You can’t get into this hospital until our team says your bed or room is clean and ready,” EVS senior Director Ed Crump told Iron City Ink. “It starts with us.”

The work these employees do is “critical” to patient health, Crump said.

Crump and his staff don’t want patients who come to UAB “to become any sicker than they already are,” he said.

“Their job is to make sure we don't cause any cross-contamination from one patient to another,” Crump said.

This is a massive job. Each day, EVS employees clean 400 beds for new patients and another 700 or 800 beds for patients already in the hospital, Crump said.

EVS cleans a staggering 4.5 million square feet daily, he said.

And EVS works shifts 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Crump is proud of his team. “We’re a big place, and it’s amazing how they make it happen,” he said.

During the pandemic, the people of Birmingham should be glad the city has a large medical facility like UAB with “a lot of people and resources,” Crump said, praising the people who work “behind the scenes” in departments like maintenance, facilities, emergency management and infection prevention to have employees ready to deal with crises before they occur.

Emergency management worked with EVS on how to handle a pandemic and infection prevention worked with Crump’s staff regarding how to clean properly.

“Those support departments work so well together to the point that COVID-19 really did not catch us by surprise,” Crump said.

The sheer number of patients affected by the pandemic was surprising, Crump said. “But we know how to do it.”