ARCHITECTURE & DESIGN
‘Factory to frame’ approach on delivering new hospitals
Paul Bell, a Partner at Ryder Architecture, discusses successfully delivering major healthcare projects in the context of post-Brexit labour shortages, post-pandemic material supply, and the escalating climate emergency – a challenge that he says ‘requires fresh thinking’.
The Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary begins to take shape. The project utilises systems including large-scale prefabricated components and structural elements.
In 2018, Ryder Architecture published Reinvention for an Exceptional Construction Industry.1
The façade system at the Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary is a series of precast load-bearing insulated panels manufactured off site using Laing O’Rourke’s DfMA principles.
It called on the
whole project team to unite behind a single goal to place the project ahead of each team member’s commercial priorities. At the heart of this is a commitment to integrated design and collaborative project working; breaking down the historic silos of the built environment professions and industry, and embracing and developing digital design technology to provide a synergy from concept to construction. That synergy is fundamental to developing a response to the challenges of delivering the New Hospital Programme (NHP), embracing the potential of Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DfMA) and Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) to bring significant benefits in terms of on-site productivity, quality, environmental and social impact, and whole-life cost. Building on our successful collaboration
on complex hospital projects, and harnessing significant global healthcare experience alongside trusted engineering partners, WSP and Hoare Lea, we developed and jointly published in 2021 the research paper, Intelligent Hospital Design Principles,2 the NHP.
to respond to the key drivers of
Pioneering use of MMC on Stoke hospital project Ryder and WSP were part of the design team working alongside Laing O’Rourke for Royal Stoke University Hospital that pioneered the extensive use of MMC technologies on major hospital projects in the early 2000s. We built on our knowledge and experience in the development of the design for the multi-award-winning Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary (DGRI). On the DGRI project, developed with Laing O’Rourke, the application of digital design enabled a direct workflow from design to manufacture, testing and optimising alternative scenarios, and coordinating components. Our digital design models were used directly as a base for supply chain fabrication information, and to inform the programme of component installation, reducing time and risk. The hospital was completed six months ahead of contract programme, with associated cost benefits and reductions to community disruption and carbon emissions.
Evolution of the envelope design DGRI was a great success, but there were lessons to learn. For example, as part of the evolution of the envelope design, the
number of external panel types grew from a small number of generics, to a large number of bespoke panels with varying structural thickness levels and connection details. To improve standardisation and optimise sequencing where construction progress was not reliant on a number of bespoke panels, we have developed the modularity of the external design for subsequent projects at Whipps Cross Hospital in Leytonstone, and at Leighton Hospital in Crewe. All three projects incorporate an external panel design that enables window modules to be installed off site, with suitable minimum chord widths below and to the side of windows. At Whipps Cross, feature piers and fins are designed as separate panels to avoid increasing the number of panels through handing, and to design out asymmetric loading of panels. These design considerations will optimise the lifting operations and improve programme efficiency, learning directly from DGRI, recognising that if MMC programme and cost benefits are to be realised, particularly on tightly constrained live hospital sites, then crane hook time and just-in-time delivery need to be key design considerations from early concept stage.
February 2023 Health Estate Journal 61
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