David's story

David Lawson
Chief Procurement Officer

“I was focused on maintaining the supply of PPE. My biggest fear was a stock out and letting down the clinical teams. The Trust doesn’t know how close we came. A stock-out would have been catastrophic because it would have undermined confidence. There was a real fear the clinical teams would not come in to work if they had concerns about PPE.

In March, just before lockdown, the NHS supply chain collapsed as demand went through the roof and it was overwhelmed. It felt like we were on our own. It was the same across the country – with hospitals running critically low of PPE or trying to do something about it.

Just before Easter we were told London would receive no new supply of gowns – and we were coming up to a 4 day bank holiday. We were lucky, through contacts we had been put in touch with factories in China. Working with the Department of Health we had 30,000 gowns flying in on the Sunday. We had a truck waiting at Gatwick to collect them. We’d managed to borrow a plane from Virgin to airlift them from Shanghai. That was interesting – not only were we buying PPE from China but chartering our own plane to bring it back.

Before Christmas, an FFP2 mask was 16p. In April it was £2.38. That’s a rise of 1,392%. It shows the inflation in the market.

I remember one Friday we worked out we had 4 hours supply of FFP3 masks left. Critical care was full and eating through thousands of masks each day. Through mutual aid between hospitals we found some, and the army helped to deliver them overnight.

There were quite a few horror stories of other hospitals having to go to extreme lengths to maintain supply. Staff had to manage with one mask all day, couldn’t go to the toilet, couldn’t have a drink. I’m proud we were able to keep the critical care team supplied with essential PPE throughout.

The feedback I got was that the supply chain team was keeping the clinical teams going. We had to maintain confidence. I remember driving home one night thinking ‘we have to keep them safe’. I felt quite emotional. It surprised me because I am not that kind of person.

We are using 140,000 items of PPE a day now, twice as much as at the height of the crisis. Every patient who walks through the hospital entrance, every member of staff is issued with a surgical mask. We eat through the supplies day to day. We now have a 3 month forward supply. We have a supply chain hub in Dartford and we supply 4 other London hospitals. We’ve even set up a 3D printing farm with 200 3D printers to make plastic eye shields. 

My wife works in the Trust and has mainly worked from home. I was working 7 days a week with not much sleep. We have 2 teenagers and my youngest son has a kidney condition so, yes, there was a risk. But you have to get through it. 

It was very intense. But the truth is I felt a level of freedom. There were literally no rules other than find a solution and in many ways that is very liberating. I keep saying, after this is over, I am going to have to have de-radicalisation therapy.”