ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING


ophthalmic casualty unit, and a trauma facility, and that of the site’s Dental Hospital. The major part of the upgrade, however, took place within the Leazes Wing.”


A lot of existing ‘issues’


When Andy Fairless re-joined the Trust in 2015, the director of Estates made clear that there had been ‘quite a lot of issues’ with the RVI’s electrical infrastructure. He elaborated: “There were a lot of old switchboards and switchgear, with a lack of investment in electrical infrastructure, particularly in the Leazes Wing, the Claremont Wing, and the Newcastle Dental Hospital. There were also plans to potentially add two new buildings on the RVI site, with would entail relocation and expansion of the current ITU facilities, Burns Unit, and operating theatres, into a New Specialist Hospital Building. A CQC inspection in 2016 saw the Trust rated ‘Outstanding’ overall – including for the quality of our care – but concerns were raised over the inadequate space on parts of the Leazes Wing, and particularly in the wards, which are a mixture of single and two-bedded rooms and open bays.” Similarly, the CQC raised concerns over a lack of space in the Leazes Wing’s Maternity/Delivery areas. Andy Fairless said: “The CQC said these facilities were no longer fit for purpose for the number of babies we deliver annually – currently around 6,500. There is currently no decant ward, so we don’t have a rolling ward refurbishment programme. Another reason to build the New Specialist Hospital Building is to give us space in the Leazes Wing to accommodate at least two decant wards – one for winter pressures, and the other for planned maintenance and refurbishments. We are still at Strategic Outline Business case stage for the New Specialist Hospital Building, but will certainly need additional electrical capacity if it is built.”


Developed on an area of waste land If developed as per the Trust’s plans, the New Specialist Hospital Building will be in the region of 24,000 m2


in size – around


half the size of the current Leazes Wing, and will be built on the south of the site in an area of waste land and car parking. Andy Fairless said there were also plans to bring children’s congenital heart services across from the Freeman Hospital to the RVI: “These are not yet far advanced,” he explained, “but if they go ahead, the objective would be to bring paediatric services across to a new accommodation adjacent to the Great North Children’s Hospital. Part of my remit was too look at the existing electrical infrastructure across the RVI site, and identify the capacity shortfall if these new buildings went ahead.”


Returning to 2015, and his discussions with the then Director of Estates, he


30 Health Estate Journal August 2020


Andy Fairless (left) with Jake Marshall, who was taken on secondment for the project, and ran the scheme day to day from the Trust side ‘for virtually its entire duration’. He is now a full-time Specialist Engineering manager (Electrical) at the Trust.


explained: “Aware that these new buildings were likely to be constructed, we appointed a north-east-based consulting engineer, DTA, to work up a ‘worst case scenario’ of the potential electrical loads. DTA looked at the current site loads, and at the future site electrical demand based on full mechanical and electrical services. The aim was to focus on the anticipated future electrical load site-wide, and to identify where the weaknesses on the HV network were.”


An extensive report


DTA’s analysis took ‘some 2-3 months’, with the consultants ‘walking the site’ and taking an exhaustive look at the electrical load on meters, the size of cables, transformer sizes and loads, and cable routing, to identify any electrical shortfalls on the electrical distribution network. Andy Fairless said: “DTA’s extensive report identified 10 transformers in need of replacement, and HV cabling that was inadequately sized or jointed. DTA also approached Northern Powergrid, the regional network operator, to ascertain the maximum load it could provide for the site. At the time, this figure was around 11 MVA. One of DTA’s findings was that our two main incoming feeder cables were under-sized. If we wanted to expand the clinical services delivered on site, we’d need to replace these cables from the Ridley Building main primary sub-station outside the hospital grounds, which go on to feed both Newcastle University and the Eldon Square Shopping Centre. It is one of the city centre’s largest primary sub-stations. The DTA report was completed in around mid-2016.”


External power cuts


In fact, Andy Fairless explained, the RVI site had encountered a number of external power cuts. He said: “We generate electricity on site through CHP engines, and the report identified that the associated G59 protection relays were tripping the two main incoming HV circuit-breakers for the site under ‘fault conditions’ more often than intended. Indeed, in 2017 alone, we had 10 electrical disruptions in one month. As a result, the new Estates director, Rob Smith, and I met with Northern Powergrid to ascertain what we needed to do to ensure greater resilience. I believe the frequent power outages were due to the RVI being in a prime city centre location, sharing the same HV supply as Newcastle University and the Eldon Square shopping centre. If they had a fault, so did we. To address this, we moved our protection relays from the RVI intake sub-station to the RVI’s Energy Centre. Since doing so, we are unlucky if we have one or two power failures per year. The disruption from a mains failure of just 1-2 seconds’ duration can be significant; it can take several hours to reset some medical equipment, such as MRI scanners.”


I wondered about this work’s impact on hospital activity. Andy Fairless said: “There was no disruption to site power. Northern Powergrid had to witness the move and operation of the relays to ensure that they would fulfil their function.” A Teesside-based electrical contractor, Jones & Father, carried out the design and modification. This work was undertaken in 2017, and in all, took about four weeks. Andy Fairless said:


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