CONSTRUCTION
High PMV projects: quicker, safer, greener
With waiting lists remaining at historically high levels, healthcare providers need to urgently build capacity at pace. Simon Squirrell, national sales director at Vanguard Healthcare Solutions, explains how volumetric construction with high pre-manufactured value is transforming healthcare estates.
Healthcare providers across the UK are facing an unprecedented challenge: expanding capacity at speed while maintaining safe, high-quality environments for patients and staff. Traditional construction methods – often slow, disruptive, and complex – are increasingly unable to meet the demands placed on today’s health systems. As someone who works alongside NHS
Trusts and Health Boards every day, I see the urgent need for estate solutions that are faster, more predictable, and deliver long-term term value. Volumetric modular construction – specifically, high pre-manufactured value (PMV) projects – answers that call. Volumetric construction, or modular
construction, is the process of manufacturing modules in an offsite factory, bringing them to site, and then joining them together to construct a building.
Volumetric construction There are a number of different types of volumetric construction. At our factory in Hull we use modular building techniques to create high-quality, clinical spaces for use exclusively in healthcare. These include sector leading operating theatres, wards, clinics, emergency care facilities, central sterilisation units, endoscopy suites, decontamination suites, surgical hubs, and community diagnostic centres.
Hospitals must find ways to add capacity without
compromising safety or service continuity, and for many NHS Trusts and Health Boards this creates a difficult balance – they must build more space, much faster than ever before, at a time when traditional construction methods are struggling to keep pace with operational and regulatory demands. It is a reality that those responsible for managing and
developing healthcare estates feel acutely. Projects must not only move quickly but also deliver predictable outcomes, minimise disruption, and comply with increasingly stringent standards around infection prevention, energy performance, fire safety, acoustic quality, and sustainability. In this context, volumetric modular construction, particularly with high pre- manufactured value, has begun to transform how the NHS considers estate expansion. Of course, for those working within healthcare construction, the concept of modular building is not
A major opportunity, with minimal disruption Our role as a creator of specialist healthcare solutions has shown us just how transformative these modern methods can be. Volumetric construction offers a major opportunity for healthcare providers looking to increase clinical capacity with minimal disruption. A recent project saw the Vanguard team design build and deliver a modular Community Diagnostic Centre in Swindon, on behalf of Great Western Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. Using modern methods of construction, we built a centre to include two endoscopy treatment rooms and six patient pods for pre- and post-treatment. Other rooms include a reception and administration team area, waiting area, admission room, two consultation rooms, nurse station, storage areas, utility rooms and scopes stores, and staff welfare rooms and kitchen. With an anticipated 6,000 patients over 12 months,
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new. What is different now is the level of precision, sophistication, and clinical readiness that high PMV volumetric solutions can offer. When more than 80 per cent of a building is manufactured offsite, the benefits for the NHS estate become tangible, measurable, and directly linked to operational continuity. The promise of faster construction is often the headline, with ground works on site happening concurrently with the construction of the modules in the factory, and the advantages extend far deeper than programme duration alone.
Installation of a diagnostic centre in the heart of the community.
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