CONSTRUCTION
Multiple benefits of a standardised approach
Mott MacDonald’s Modern Methods of Construction and healthcare specialists, Ben Carlisle and Andrew Parks, and the business’s Industrialised Design and Construction director, Trudi Sully, believe that industrialisation of design and construction methods could reduce costs at every lifecycle stage of healthcare facilities, as well as improve the quality of patient care. The firm’s managing editor, Claire Smith, spoke to them to find out more.
Building new hospitals is complex, and schemes are often over budget, delayed, or beset with unforeseen complications during the construction phase. Fewer and fewer contractors want to take on hospital projects as a result of the risk, placing the ability to deliver new healthcare facilities at the scale and pace needed under threat. Can that risk around these projects however be reduced by standardising the design to remove the variability and give cost and programme certainty? Mott MacDonald Technical director for Healthcare, Andrew Parks, and Global lead for Industrialised Design and Construction, Ben Carlisle, both believe that taking an industrialised construction approach could do this, and more. However, taking this methodology calls for change across the healthcare sector. To demonstrate the need to find an alternative
approach, Ben Carlisle says that it is currently likely to be more profitable for construction firms to build offshore wind farms in the North Sea than it is to deliver a hospital project in a city centre. He says: “That doesn’t feel logical, but the offshore wind sector is highly modular and standardised, and, despite the offshore location, that reduces the risk. It is clear that we cannot keep using the same approach to
building hospitals and expect it to deliver a dramatically different outcome. If we truly want an alternative result, then we must seek out new methods and delivery models in healthcare.”
Three key benefits Andrew Parks agrees, and says that there are three key benefits to standardising healthcare facility construction: improved decision making, better management of complexity, and reducing the risk profile of projects. He says: “Decision making in healthcare focuses on getting a hospital built quickly, leading to rushed, premature decisions, such as building a hospital without properly understanding what the need is, and jumping into designing a new hospital too quickly. Standardisation helps in understanding problems objectively, and making better decisions earlier in the process.” According to Andrew Parks, the complex nature
of developing a new hospital, and the number of stakeholders involved, means that changes on part of the scheme can have unforeseen negative impacts on others. “Standardisation helps manage this complexity by providing an integrated, structured approach to design,” he adds. When applied to a programme of
Andrew Parks
Mott MacDonald worked as a Technical advisor on the design of the Forth Valley Hospital at Larbert in Scotland, which used Modern Methods of Construction.
Andrew Parks has extensive experience in complex transformational infrastructure projects, as well as healthcare operations. Formally an Operations director at the Mayo Clinic and director of its Global Consulting team, he is now a Technical director at Mott MacDonald. Andrew is a programme strategy expert, and has advised on and led several internationally significant healthcare related projects. Through his work, he aims to develop an integrated systems approach to use of Modern Methods of Construction on projects to drive industrialisation and standardisation that benefit both delivery and operational use.
May 2025 Health Estate Journal 37
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