STARC Systems

During an occupied renovation project, there are multiple factors that must be taken into consideration to minimize disruptions to employees, visitors, and patients in hospitals. Many of the current temporary containment solutions fall short in ensuring an ideal experience during a renovation project. For example, traditional drywall—one of the commonly used containment solutions is labor intensive, messy, wasteful, and extremely disruptive to occupants while being installed and dismantled. When renovating an occupied space, facilities need a solution that eliminates the disruption of renovation.

Tim Hebert, owner of a Maine-based third-generation construction company, had a vision of a modular, reusable, extremely durable temporary containment system that was easy to install and looked great. With this idea, he founded STARC Systems in 2012. Soon after, Herbert met Bruce Bickford, an experienced mechanical engineer and product developer-who is now the VP of product development for the company. With Herbert’s construction experience and Bickford’s product development proficiency, they were able to create and test the prototype of an innovative containment system–RealWall.

“By introducing RealWall, we created a new sound attenuating category within the temporary containment solutions space,” says Chris Vickers, president and CEO of STARC Systems. What makes the RealWall containment solution so unique is its rugged 3-layer construction with a 1” foam core which reduces renovation noise by up to 50 percent.

It is durable and reusable it can be used on hundreds of jobs over a number of years quickly paying for itself after just 3-5 uses virtually eliminating future containment costs. It also goes up quickly, quietly with no disruption and a hundred feet can be installed in just one hour.

STARC Systems introduced LiteBarrier in 2019 as the most durable solution in the lightweight temporary containment category. It is an ideal solution for jobs where sound attenuation is not required, projects with tighter budgets or for jobs that will frequently be reconfigured. LiteBarrier is significantly more durable than the typical plastic polycarbonate offerings in the lightweight category. Notably, both STARC solutions exceed ICRA Class IV and ASTM E-84 requirements.

STARC is the containment solution of choice for healthcare renovations. Its negative air capability allows for patient occupied renovations to happen without closing existing facilities, disturbing patients, staff or visitors and by protecting them from harmful and dangerous dust. In the wake of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, STARC is also being used for infection isolation preparedness and to create immediate patient surge capacity for hospitals. STARC’s solutions can be used to create anterooms, hallway isolation and even multi-pod free standing rooms. The company recently doubled its production capacity to shorten lead times and meet demand.

The flexibility of STARC’s solutions allows for temporary containment across a wide variety of verticals beyond just healthcare. Contractors are using it in commercial office space renovations to minimize dust, debris and noise and to create an aesthetically pleasing solution to increase employee satisfaction and productivity. Airports are using STARC to hide the disruption of terminal renovation and have added graphics to the panels to help direct passengers. STARC can also be used to create free standing walls to hide baggage carousel renovations. Libraries are using RealWall in places where sound attenuation is important for patrons and LiteBarrier where sound attenuation is not required. Higher education facilities are using STARC for a multitude of projects like cafeteria, classroom and office renovations on campuses across the country.

With such innovative solutions in place, STARC Systems has established itself as a leader in the arena of reusable modular temporary containment. STARC Systems is tirelessly working on developing more novel solutions and upgrading the existing ones by integrating new technologies. “With the proven capability of our team of experts, we are now poised to become the nation’s leader in temporary containment solutions,” concludes Vickers.