CONSTRUCTION
Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust’s new Sterile Services Facility was designed and built in just over a year using Merit’s Flexi Pod solution.
essential for the healthcare sector.
Improving timelines Construction projects involve long processes of ‘to and fro-ing’ between the various parties, including healthcare estate managers, architects, the construction business, and more. Taking a collaborative approach from the outset of the project can significantly improve timelines and outcomes. By prioritising an all-party approach from the design creation stage onwards, an outcome that meets all the individual needs of teams is more likely. This approach can also reduce the need for re-configuration or significant alteration requests at a later stage, avoiding costly delays.
As an example, Merit worked on the Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust’s Sterile Services Facility, where regular collaborative workshops drove the project forward from the early stages, and this enabled an approximate six-month time saving compared with traditional
Merit says its offsite-manufactured solutions ‘enable the highest level of infection control for healthcare settings’.
methods. During the workshops, the Merit and Trust teams worked closely on developing design innovation in order to maintain technical functionality within budget constraints, for instance to establish superior infection control, at affordable costs. The early engagement also allowed costs to be agreed on and fixed in only three weeks. Digital platforms are essential to the success of such a collaborative approach, providing everyone with seamless real-time access to the latest plans and designs. Although such platforms are already widely available, they are significantly under-used.
Tailored to the healthcare sector Employing Modern Methods of Construction also enables innovation, which is beneficial for the healthcare sector, and results in facilities that are more suitable for current and future needs, be it improved infection control, or meeting NHS Net Zero targets. The high ratio of hospital-acquired COVID
infection cases during the pandemic has shown that infection control should be an utmost priority in all healthcare facilities. A recent report by the National Engineering Policy Centre (NEPC) has urged the improvement of building health and the imperative of buildings enabling adequate infection resilience. It has been reported that proper infection control can save £23 bn in ‘annual societal costs’ for the UK. Modular designs offer a response to such needs from the building phases onwards, and can be in place to allow better response to any future healthcare scares.
A rendered image of the new Berwick Hospital project Merit was recently awarded. Here, it says, distributed POD energy centres will be incorporated into the roof, ‘eliminating the need for a space-hogging Energy Centre, and improving the green credentials of the building’.
66 Health Estate Journal January 2023
Cleanroom experience As an example, Merit built on its in- depth cleanroom experience learnt from biopharma projects. The aim was to provide the highest level of infection control for healthcare settings, including the use of recirculation systems with HEPA filtration or air socks to provide access to fresh air. A patented design platform supports pressure cascade optimisation, which allows rooms occupied by immunocompromised or patients with serious infectious diseases to be isolated from adjacent areas. With buildings representing a significant proportion of the NHS’s carbon emissions and impact, and with the Net Zero commitments gaining increasing importance, modular designs can enable healthcare settings with lower impact from the onset. Merit has implemented a core strategy of not offering fossil fuel as part of any project delivered, replacing natural gas with heat pumps and smart heat recovery systems. Such considerations can also have wider impacts for building projects, as in the case of the new Berwick Hospital project that Merit was recently awarded. Here, distributed POD energy centres will be incorporated into the roof, eliminating the need for a space-hogging Energy Centre and improving the green credentials of the building.
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