EQUIPMENT INSTALLATION
Early technical checks in clinical equipment installs
Clinical equipment installations remain among the most technically complex and risk sensitive elements of healthcare capital projects. Yet, in many schemes, these requirements are not addressed early enough in the design process, leading to avoidable impacts on programme certainty, capital cost, and operational performance. Drawing on experience from a wide range of healthcare capital programmes, Vakhtang Takov, associate director, and Colm Gaughan, senior project manager, both of Turner & Townsend, explore the underlying causes of these recurring issues and set out a structured approach to early technical assurance and whole life planning.
The failure to adequately plan for clinical equipment at the earliest stages of a project rarely reflects ignorance of the issue. The problems arise from a combination of structural and behavioural factors deeply embedded in how UK healthcare capital projects are procured and managed. Equipment procurement is often separated from
Clinical assets such as MRI machines have economic lives of up to 15 years.
construction procurement. In many NHS capital programmes, the building contractor is appointed and the design progresses – sometimes as far as RIBA Stage 3 or later – before any formal engagement takes place with equipment suppliers. As a result, technical information such as spatial envelopes, structural loading requirements, vibration limits, power demands, and heat rejection data is not available at the point when design teams need it most. Without this information, architects and engineers are forced to rely on assumptions or generic standards taken from previous schemes, many of which may no longer reflect current technology. The scale of the NHS estate makes this challenge even more significant. The total occupied floor area of NHS Trusts in England exceeds 25 million square metres, with acute Trusts accounting for most of this footprint. Every additional square metre represents clinical and non-
clinical space where equipment planning decisions will have long term operational and financial implications. Choices made early in design, whether informed by accurate data or shaped by outdated assumptions, will continue to influence building performance, clinical flow, and running costs long after construction has been completed.
Engagement gaps Clinical end users, including radiographers, consultants, theatre teams, and estates managers, are the people who best understand how equipment is used in practice and what operational requirements follow from that use. Their involvement in capital project design processes is often too limited, too late, or too narrowly focused on room layout rather than on the wider infrastructure implications that determine whether a facility will perform well throughout its life. When clinical teams are not meaningfully embedded
in the design process, important requirements such as the need for adjacent recovery space, specific ceiling heights to support equipment hoisting, or appropriate duct routes for future equipment replacement frequently remain unrecognised until construction is well advanced
Clinical equipment installations are among the most technically demanding and risk intensive components of healthcare capital delivery. When they go wrong, the consequences are visible, costly, and operationally disruptive.
144 Health Estate Journal October 2026
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148 |
Page 149 |
Page 150 |
Page 151 |
Page 152 |
Page 153 |
Page 154 |
Page 155 |
Page 156 |
Page 157 |
Page 158 |
Page 159 |
Page 160 |
Page 161 |
Page 162 |
Page 163 |
Page 164 |
Page 165 |
Page 166 |
Page 167 |
Page 168 |
Page 169 |
Page 170 |
Page 171 |
Page 172 |
Page 173 |
Page 174 |
Page 175 |
Page 176 |
Page 177 |
Page 178 |
Page 179 |
Page 180 |
Page 181 |
Page 182 |
Page 183 |
Page 184 |
Page 185 |
Page 186 |
Page 187 |
Page 188
