MODERN METHODS OF CONSTRUCTION
MTX Project director, Adam Robertson, said: “We had to sink piling 20 metres down to support the new five-storey structure, as well as lay traditional foundations, following the sloping site’s contours.”
new building allows patients of different acuities to be housed in one particular ‘section’.
Fantastic ‘buy-in’ from all As we left the ground floor, she pointed out a second, smaller lift, for visitors to the Trauma Building. There is also a dedicated fire exit into the Trauma Building. She said: “The planning for this fantastic new building had to be undertaken in the middle of a pandemic, and the universal buy-in to get a really high-quality design developed, rapidly signed off, and then completed on schedule, has been phenomenal. The collaboration between the Clinical and Estates teams was exceptional. MTX has led the construction superbly, and its team and sub-contractors have been extremely responsive, while the architects, from IBI’s Manchester office, worked very collaboratively with us in the design phase. We also benefited from time and motion studies led by Senior Nurse and PhD student, Jody Ede, who planned a day where she marked out the floor plan in a hall in the main hospital, and undertook a time and motion study with a patient ICU bed and the associated equipment.”
Multi-function single rooms We had now gone up to the second floor which, like the third, will house 18 beds – and shares a similar design. Lyn Bennett ran me through a number of other features, firstly showing me one of two single rooms. These, she explained, will have a number of potential uses – for instance they might house patients nearing end of life, and thus requiring particular privacy, or say, a prisoner needing intensive care accompanied by their guard. The second and third floors also each have two
Aaron Burke, MTX’s senior Design manager, said: “Where hybrid construction really showed its benefits, and speeded the programme, was that we could have the modules being built off site while demolition and groundworks were still ongoing.”
‘discussion rooms’. She said: “The beds on each clinical floor are arranged in racetrack configuration, for clinical efficiency, and rapid horizontal evacuation in the event of fire. Our plan, on moving into the building, will be to occupy one, or at most, two, of the three clinical floors initially, segregating patients with COVID into a particular area, before occupying all the clinical floors over the following months. The flexibility of the layout, and, for example, the incorporation of the privacy rooms, will enable us to adapt how we use the clinical floors to meet different care needs.” Following this interesting tour, I spoke
to Adam Robertson, a director at MTX, and the company’s Project director. He said: “Once we got the go-ahead to start work, we demolished the single-storey buildings that formed the Barnes Unit, before beginning some quite extensive groundworks. This included diverting two water mains and a gas main, and constructing a new sub-station for the Critical Care building, which we connected into the HV ring main. We also installed two new transformers, with the new electrical infrastructure also serving the Trauma Building and the MRI building just behind.
Deep piling “We had to sink piling 20 metres down to support the new five-storey structure, and lay traditional foundations, following the
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sloping site’s contours. With the building over three storeys high, we had to source Execution Class Three steel for the frame, which entails welding and cutting to tolerances as low as 1 mm. In keeping with the high-quality design, and the acuity of the patients, the concrete floors have a Response Factor of 1. The modules were manufactured off site without roofs or floors, transported here by lorry, and then brought in in the right quantity to form one floor at a time, with each delivery and lift extending over five days. While we were installing the floors and fitting out the modules with the required services, the next set was being manufactured. The external terracotta tiles are fixed to Rockwool insulated panels bonded to a base layer of Siniat 60-minute metal stud non-load-bearing plasterboard. The result is a U value exceeding that required in the Building Regulations Part L, and full fire safety compliance.”
Fire suppression system The building has a full water-based fire suppression system from Ultra Sure Fire, which also supplies the Trauma Building. Adam Robertson added: “There is also a pretty innovative Pro Economy cold water return system for maintaining the cold water supply at below the temperature at which Legionella bacteria can grow, which also employs a copper / silver solution.
MTX’s Adam Robertson: “We demolished the single- storey buildings that formed the Barnes Unit, before beginning some quite extensive groundworks. This included diverting two water mains and a gas main, and constructing a new sub-station”
May 2022 Health Estate Journal 47
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