Marshall Specialist Vehicles play key role in the UK MOD support vehicle project

The Norwegian Defence Logistics Organization (NDLO) has recently taken delivery of two mobile medical facilities/field hospitals, a third is under construction. These hospitals have been designed and built by Marshall SV the Cambridge UK based specialist vehicle and shelter manufacturer and integrator.

The first medical facility was delivered in 2005 the second in 2007; the third will be delivered in 2008. The first facility was a so called Role 1 medical facility i.e. it has surgical and emergency treatment facilities. The second was a Role 2 Hospital as will be the third. The Role 2 Hospital is about 5 times the size of a Role 1 Hospital and is designed in effect to be a full district hospital as one would see anywhere in the developed world. The difference is it can be quickly moved from District to District!

These self contained medical facilities are an immense improvement on previous mobile military dressing and casualty clearance stations which used tents. A Role 1 facility and the core of a Role 2 hospital can be deployed, erected and working on patients within an hour and a half of its arrival at a site and taken to pieces and be on the move even more quickly when it needs to be redeployed.

When the Role One Hospital was delivered to Norway it was virtually immediately deployed to Afghanistan. A small team of Marshall SV customer support specialists travelled with it to ensure that it was taken into service as quickly as possible and that the users and the maintenance staff were made aware of all the facilities within it and got the best out of it for their care of troops from all the NATO and other Allied nations deployed in Afghanistan.

Customer support is a keystone of Marshall SV's activities and is a demonstration of Marshall SV's continuing and dedicated commitment to the end users of the equipment and capability it delivers. The same department had previously supported UK Medical Teams when they deployed to the Gulf for operation Enduring Freedom, the Invasion of Iraq in 2003. In this case the UK deployed a system called Modular Transportable Surgical Facilities-(MTSF) on which the Norwegian Role 1 system was based.

In addition to the work training the NDLO staff in its basic use the Marshall SV team were there to help with rapid deployment and redeployment if required, as they were with the UK MTSFs in 2003. However once the skills had been mastered by the NDLO technicians who found the system easy to use the Marshall SV team were able to withdraw. Members of the team return to assist with troop rotations if required and to help with any specialist maintenance or upgrades that might be needed. The Customer Support team are also on call to assist with training Norwegian troops deploying to Afghanistan.