ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING
Resilience and capacity boosted at Newcastle’s RVI
A major upgrade of the HV and LV electrical infrastructure at Newcastle’s Royal Victoria Infirmary (RVI), which took over a year in planning, and a further 18 months’ work to complete, has substantially boosted the site’s electrical capacity, increasing its resilience, and reducing power outages, after a peak of 10 such incidents in December 2017, as well as ‘future-proofing’ the hospital for several decades in the light of further major site development planned there. HEJ’s editor, Jonathan Baillie, met with Andy Fairless, the Operational Estates Engineering manager at the Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, who explained how he and a small Trust electrical engineering team, an expert external electrical contractor, and Operations colleagues, worked together to complete the most complex engineering project of his career to date.
Andy Fairless began by putting his own involvement, and the timelines of the project, in context. Having spent 18 years in various Estates roles with the Trust from 1992 until 2010, he then had a five- year spell at two other north-east England Trusts. However, missing the challenges of a senior electrical role at a large acute hospital, he returned to the RVI in 2015, and almost immediately found himself involved in the major electrical upgrade project. This, he explained, took not only extensive design planning – which required all his skills and expertise, and those of his Estates engineering colleagues, but also those of two external electrical consulting engineers, and a north-east-based electrical contractor, to successfully complete. The result – the project was completed last December – is that the site’s electrical resilience has been substantially increased. The hospital, which shares its two incoming HV cables with the adjoining Newcastle University and the city’s Eldon Square Shopping Centre, is now considerably less at risk of power outages, and has a far greater electrical capacity. Alongside affording greater electrical resilience, the HV/LV upgrade will enable the RVI Estates team to begin undertaking key backlog maintenance and building upgrade work, confident in the knowledge that the electrical infrastructure will be up to the task. Equally, the Trust has plans to move its paediatric cardiac services from the Freeman Hospital in the east of Newcastle to a new centre to be constructed at the
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The Royal Victoria Infirmary, which saw a major upgrade of its HV and LV electrical infrastructure during 2018 and 2019.
RVI. It also has a plan to re-locate some of its existing Maternity, HDU, and ITU facilities from the Leazes Wing at the RVI to a second new-build development at the hospital, so the electrical upgrade project had to be able to cater for future building developments.
Re-location strategy
Andy Fairless explained: “Originally the Trust had three main hospital sites – the Royal Victoria Infirmary in the city centre, the Freeman Hospital to the east, and the Newcastle General Hospital to the west. Under the ‘Transforming Newcastle’s Hospitals’ programme, the strategic goal was to re-locate all the key clinical
The hospital, which shares its two incoming HV cables with the adjoining Newcastle University and the city’s Eldon Square Shopping Centre, is now considerably less at risk of power outages, and has a far greater electrical capacity
services from the Newcastle General Hospital site, which had many ageing buildings, to both the Freeman, and, predominantly, the RVI.” In 2009, following a major construction project, the Infirmary’s seven-storey New Victoria Wing was handed over. It houses a wide range of clinical services, including many of the children’s services from the Freeman Hospital and the Newcastle General Hospital, which were transferred to the Great North Children’s Hospital – which was another driver for the HV/LV electrical upgrade at the RVI.
My ‘interviewee’ explained that the main reason for the scheme was to improve the electrical resilience of a number of existing buildings, including the 1991-built Leazes Wing, which incorporates an ITU and HDU, a neonatal intensive care unit, a regional burns centre, a coronary care ward, and 24 operating theatres. He went on to explain: “In addition, we also wanted to improve the electrical resilience of our Claremont Wing – which accommodates a further seven theatres, various wards, an
August 2020 Health Estate Journal 29
©Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
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