OFFSITE CONSTRUCTION
Theatre project boosts capacity and creates jobs
The Royal Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Foundation Trust in Birmingham has recently opened the first phase of a major theatre expansion using volumetric modular building technology. Here, Professor Philip Begg, the Trust’s executive director of Strategy and Delivery, and Alan Wilson, managing director of ModuleCo Healthcare, tell the story behind the new development.
The Royal Orthopaedic Hospital is one of Europe’s biggest specialist orthopaedic units, and ranks among the best in the NHS for patient experience. It performs over 3,000 hip and knee replacements every year, with a 96 per cent recommendation rating from its patients. The Trust urgently required new operating theatres to meet existing and future patient demand, expand its capabilities, and drive additional revenues. Four years ago, it had suffered a serious failure in the plant that operates its existing theatres, which resulted in losing three theatres for an entire week. It led to many patients being severely inconvenienced, a loss of income to the trust (of between £500,000 and £1 million), and surgeons being unable to work.
The hospital is a real mix of designs and construction types inherited from over 110 years of development. It is an organic site. The theatre block has constantly been added to, giving a mix of accommodation, some dating back 70 years or more. There are 10 existing theatres connected in groups of three to the electrical and mechanical plant. As a result, if one item of plant was lost, the Trust lost the ability to work in three theatres until the issue was addressed. There were concerns that the site was not only reliant on ageing plant, but equally that it had very little resilience. As a result, the Trust’s Board decided something had to be done.
Increasing resilience cost-effectively We are all living longer, which means an increased chance of people needing surgery such as joint replacements or hip resurfacing as they age. The hospital needed to create resilience in a timely and economic way, and to deliver it quickly. Typically for a large NHS hospital site, the theatres are located on a land- locked 14-acre site with little or no room to expand.
It felt a little like doing heart surgery. The site was at the heart of the hospital surrounded by wards, theatres, and high
56 Health Estate Journal April 2020
An artist’s impression of how the new building at the Royal Orthopaedic Hospital in Birmingham – which has been created using volumetric modular construction technology – would look.
dependency units. The new theatres had to be built without causing any disruption. In 2015, two of the old Nightingale wards, which were empty and incurring capital costs, were demolished, giving the Trust a brownfield site. The problem was that it was in the centre of the hospital estate, and was tricky to develop. ModuleCo Healthcare and its manufacturing partner, ModuleCo, were engaged. Trust personnel visited one of the company’s flagship projects at the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading, where ModuleCo had installed new theatres in a two-storey building. The Trust representatives heard how the new modular buildings had provided flexibility and agile ways of delivering solutions, which ultimately led directly to a further
2,800 patients receiving treatment annually.
The visit helped the Trust dismiss the preconceptions it had about modular solutions being a lower quality option, and understand that this was a viable option for it to provide a permanent, high quality facility, with phase one consisting of two orthopaedic operating theatre suites with a six-bed recovery suite and a 12-bed inpatient ward, including two young adult rooms. A detailed design process led by ModuleCo followed, including engaging with the local authority to gain the necessary planning permission. The first phase of the project was completed just before Christmas last year, with two hip replacement operations taking place on 23 December. Since then,
Craning of the modular units takes place.
Workers watch construction ongoing.
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