Local company produces 'health shields' for Drury properties across the country

It's often said necessity is the mother of invention.

That adage could have been applied recently when a national hotel chain approached a local company with a need for "health shields" to help protect its guests and employees from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Columbia Construction & Casework is headquartered in an 80,000-square-foot production facility on Larch Lane between Jackson and Fruitland along Interstate 55. The company is primarily engaged in building custom cabinetry, furniture and casework for the hotel industry.

But when the coronavirus outbreak began to spread earlier this spring, orders for hotel furnishings and casework were put on hold, and work at Columbia came to a virtual halt.

That changed in early April. Greg Jansen, the company's vice president and casework manager, remembers it was the first Thursday of that month, April 2, when Drury Hotels asked Columbia to supply hundreds of "health shields" for use at Drury properties across the country.

Matt Meyers lifts a freshly cut health shield off a computer numeric control cutting unit Wednesday at Columbia Construction & Casework's production facility north of Jackson.JAY WOLZ

"And we had to have a prototype sample by 7 a.m. the following Monday," Jansen recalled.

Columbia project manager Dan Fritsche said he, Jansen and a team of several other employees came together to discuss the project and whether Columbia could quickly retool its production lines to make shields meeting Drury's specifications.

"We literally went out to the hardware store and bought some acrylic, cut it, and said, 'Yeah, we can do that,'" Fritsche said.

Columbia has identified several sources of quarter-inch acrylic sheets in the St. Louis and Memphis, Tennessee, areas. Each sheet measures 4-feet wide by 8-feet long, is as clear as glass and can help prevent the spread of germs and airborne viruses. Sometimes referred to by trade names such as Plexiglas, acrylic polymers are lightweight, shatter-resistant alternatives to glass and can be cut to meet specific size requirements.

Columbia uses a CNC (computer numerical control) router -- the same one it uses for furniture production -- to score each 4-by-foot acrylic sheet to produce shield components. The CNC unit cuts patterns in the sheets much like a cookie cutter creates shapes in cookie dough, only on a much larger scale. Each acrylic sheet can produce enough components for two shields.

Columbia Construction & Casework employee Paulina Som-Becker polishes the edges of an acrylic health shield Wednesday at the company's production facility north of Jackson.JAY WOLZ

"The volume orders from Drury Hotels allowed us to order enough material to begin making them for other customers," Fritsche said. "We started promoting them through social media and have had a good response."

Columbia's shields are available in two standard sizes -- 23 inches wide by 36 inches high and 41 inches wide by 31 inches high. Shields can also be made to meet custom specifications and clips can be used to connect multiple units. Tools are not needed for shield assembly.

Over the past month and a half, Columbia has fabricated hundreds of shields, which are now in use in banks, restaurants, hotels, offices and many other businesses throughout Southeast Missouri and Southern Illinois.

"By the end of this month, we will have made more than 1,000 units," Jansen said.

Last week, Cape Girardeau County awarded a contract to Columbia Construction & Casework to provide 108 shields for use at polling places on election days, beginning with next month's municipal elections, to protect voters and poll workers. County clerks in nearly a dozen other Missouri counties have ordered shields from Columbia for their elections as well.

A close up of a cutting machine is seen Wednesday at Columbia Construction & Casework production facility north of Jackson.JAY WOLZ

"With proper care and storage, they can last for years," Fritsche said.

And, speaking of years, Fritsche said shields like the ones Columbia is making will likely be commonplace even after the COVID-19 crisis.

"We will probably be producing these for years to come," he said.

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