ELECTRICAL INFRASTRUCTURE
Critical power infrastructure for flagship Welsh hospital
Electrical safety and clinical care equipment specialist, Bender UK, has supplied critical power infrastructure valued at over £2 million to The Grange University Hospital in Cwmbran, which is due to open this month, and is one of the highest-profile new healthcare facilities ever built in Wales. Gareth Brunton, the company’s managing director, reports.
The Grange University Hospital in Cwmbran is the biggest single investment in healthcare infrastructure ever undertaken in Wales. From its inception the £350 million project was planned for rapid delivery, with the aim of using offsite manufacturing with MMC – Modern Methods of Construction – and encouraging and facilitating close collaboration between all the parties involved. It was also the biggest ever single healthcare contract for electrical safety and clinical care equipment specialist, Bender UK. Worth more than £2 million, the contract awarded by Crown House Technologies required delivery of the complex critical power infrastructure, and the supply, installation, and commissioning, of equipment for operating theatres and patient care bays. This involved equipping 11 operating theatres and two maternity delivery theatres with Merivaara Q-Flow LED surgical lights incorporating HD cameras, and hygienic surgeons’ touchscreen theatre control panels. Bender UK has also supplied, installed, and commissioned, 115 clinical pendants delivering medical gases, resilient electrical supplies, and data connections, and almost 200 LED minor examination lamps. The supply and commissioning of the pendants, lights, and theatre control panels meant that Bender was involved in liaising with medical gas suppliers, the data handling within the hospital, and the fit-out team for the theatres and ward areas, with the pendants and lights all suspended from the ceiling fittings on multi-positional arms.
Set to open ahead of schedule The Grange University Hospital is now set to open this month, six months ahead of the original schedule. It will provide complex specialist and critical care treatment for over 600,000 people in South-East Wales. The 55,000 m2 470-bed super hospital on the site of the former Llanfrechfa Grange Hospital includes a 24-hour acute assessment unit and emergency department. It will be home to more than 40 specialist services
48 Health Estate Journal November 2020
The Grange University Hospital in Cwmbran, which is due to open this month, is one of the highest-profile new healthcare facilities ever built in Wales.
from Newport’s Royal Gwent and Abergavenny’s Nevill Hall hospitals that will centralise there.
There are actually two interlinked stories around the new hospital’s construction. The first saw the MMC vision deliver a hospital facility that was originally on track for becoming operational in Spring 2021. However, in March 2020, the quickly developing coronavirus pandemic introduced a challenging new target for main contractors and suppliers, including us at Bender UK.
The Aneurin Bevan University Health Board for which the hospital was being built is responsible for an area which, at that time, accounted for more than half of Wales’ confirmed COVID-19 cases. Like the rest of the NHS, the Health Board was faced with huge challenges due to the rapid onset of the pandemic, and identified an immediate need for additional available beds to accommodate a surge in serious cases of COVID-19, in addition to the high numbers of admissions expected over the winter months.
Request to accelerate the project In March 2020, the Health Board approached the Grange Hospital project team – main contractor, Laing O’Rourke, architects, BDP, and project and cost manager, Gleeds – to ask if completion of key areas of the facility could be accelerated. The project team responded magnificently. Through a combination of careful planning, constructive collaboration, and utilising the already proven benefits of MMC and Laing O’Rourke’s use of design for manufacture and assembly (DfMA), the team was able to fast-track the build programme so that 350 beds could be made available early. Just four weeks later, at the end of April, the project team handed over 50 per cent of the hospital space, including most of the ward blocks and the ground floor of the diagnostic and treatment departments, along with the pathology department, pharmacy, facilities management services areas, and the mortuary. Car parking zones and plant areas were also part of the accelerated delivery package.
©Gleeds
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