MODERN METHODS OF CONSTRUCTION
‘Landmark’ CCU completed at Oxford’s John Radcliffe
A new 48-bedded Critical Care building at Oxford’s John Radcliffe Hospital, funded by the Department of Health and Social Care, and built by MTX, for Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (OUH), has recently been handed over. An extremely rapid design and planning process, the ‘hybrid’ MMC construction method, excellent collaboration, and 14-hour site working, seven days a week, saw it take just 15 months to get the project from initial design to handover. HEJ editor, Jonathan Baillie, who visited the site, reports.
The new Critical Care Unit Unit, funded by the Department of Health and Social Care to the tune of £24 m, has been built both as part of a regional approach for managing critical care demand and activity through the COVID-19 pandemic – supporting and alleviating future seasonal pressures, and to provide a ‘super surge centre’ in the event of future pandemic needs. The impressive structure - at five storeys, believed to be the UK’s tallest MMC healthcare facility built to date - is formed from 148 offsite-manufactured modules brought to site by low-loader and craned into position floor by floor, before being fitted with flooring, glazing, roofing, and extensive M&E services, on site. This ‘hybrid’ MMC working method enabled the steel-framed building to be completed in just 15 months. MTX says building a Critical Care Unit with such complex services requirements using traditional construction methods would have taken ‘anything up to three years’. Despite the pandemic’s challenges, the CCU was handed over to the Trust in February, slightly delayed but in budget, and will offer significantly more modern and fit-for-purpose accommodation for critical care patients, and a much- improved working environment for nurses and clinicians, than the hospital’s existing 16-bedded AICU on Level 1 of the main John Radcliffe Hospital building. The hospital’s critical care nurses
generally work 12.5-hour shifts caring one-to-one for patients requiring organ support, who need significant space for medical equipment, so the quality of the care environment is key. The new CCU will also offer considerably more space and flexibility than the JRH’s existing ‘general’ AICU, its design having been informed by extensive discussions during the planning, design, and construction phases with the nurses, doctors, and the wider multi- professional team who will staff it.
Adjacent to the Trauma Building The new building is located next to the
Above: The 66-acre John Radcliffe Hospital site.
Left: The main entrance to the John Radcliffe Hospital – the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust’s largest acute healthcare facility.
John Radcliffe’s Trauma Building, and close to The University of Oxford’s Wolfson Centre for the Prevention of Stroke and Dementia, on land formerly occupied by two single-storey administrative buildings, which were demolished prior to MTX making a start on construction. Car Park One was given over to MTX throughout.
Plenty of light and attractive views While the John Radcliffe’s existing Adult Intensive Care Unit is in an enclosed ground floor location, and receives no natural light, the new Critical Care building features large windows, and will thus benefit from ample light. The upper floors enjoy views towards ‘the
city of dreaming spires’. A range of M&E equipment in a sizeable fourth floor plant area will service all the clinical and non-clinical spaces, with its 14 air- handling units providing HTM-compliant ventilation at 16 air changes / hour, and enabling each ‘half’ of the three clinical floors – the ground, second, and third – to be separately ventilated. In addition, the 10 isolation rooms – two on the first floor and four each on the second and third – will benefit from their own air supply. The ventilation system will enable air change rates, temperature, and humidity, to be adjusted for patients of different medical acuity. The fourth floor also houses a sizeable ‘stores’ for medical items and
May 2022 Health Estate Journal 43
Courtesy of the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
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