21ST-CENTURY DESIGN
Left: The existing trench ‘virtually’ underneath the structural model. Right: New floors connecting into the existing building cantilever over the server room.
visibility with each iteration. It was not possible to find a completely clear route, and so it was more a question of determining which clashes could be worked around and which could not. It was quite uncanny to see the trench constructed on site with the drain runs crossing it exactly as our model showed.
Dyson Cancer Centre
The third and current project is the new Cancer Centre opposite Therapies at the hospital entrance, and currently in design. Demolition of the existing buildings on this site will be permissible once the ‘decant’ into Therapies has happened, but not everything can be demolished. Critical items of infrastructure above and below ground have to be retained and worked around. 3D modelling and scanning techniques have helped us to decide with the Trust how to do this. From the Estates Department we learned that there was an existing service trench running underneath the footprint of the proposed new building. Moving the building to avoid this was not an option, as it would effectively lose valuable above ground space, and reduce the viability of
Claire Thomas
Claire Thomas MA (Oxf), CEng, MIStructE, is a director at Integral Engineering Design, and works across the company’s Bath and London offices. She has been working in the built environment as a structural engineer for 25 years on a wide range of projects across many sectors, including healthcare. As the project engineer for the new £13 million Therapies Centre at the Royal United Hospital in Bath, she saw it through from initial conception and associated enabling works to completion on site. She is an enthusiastic advocate of BIM, and, as she puts it, ‘the opportunities it opens up for collaboration across disciplines, and its particular benefits for highly serviced healthcare environments’.
104 Health Estate Journal October 2019
the whole scheme. Moreover, not all the trench needed to be retained, but if it was removed it would necessitate creating a new escape stair access to the part that did remain.
A complex spatial problem All in all, it was a complex spatial problem, which needed to be solved in 3D. Kier commissioned a 3D survey of the inside of the trench using Matterport. This is like a high definition ‘Google’ street map view, which looks photo-realistic, and can be navigated around. This produced a 3D model of the trench in its virtual ‘real’ location, which we could import into our model to see how it interfaced with our new structure. This was supplemented with a few exploratory holes to assess the level and setting out of the trench’s external dimensions.
The Cancer Centre also has to work around existing surface infrastructure. A patient-critical server room is located on the ground floor, above the service trench, and at the location where the building connects to the main hospital. As uninterrupted access is required to this room, the connecting first and second
floors have to be built over this room while it remains in operation. 3D modelling of the existing building and substructure has enabled a structural solution to be developed that fits around these constraints, borrowing principles more commonly found in bridge building. The 3D model enabled the zone between the existing roof and new first floor to be described in 3D space, with the design tailored to this restriction. The walls between the floors have large diagonal steels, which make this into a structure which cantilevers out from the new concrete frame, and reduces the thickness of the floors to maintain a safe clearance over the roof and provide space for services. The disruption to the existing building is minimised to openings and connections at floor levels.
Conclusions
The beauty of 3D modelling is that the increased upfront work of creating the models is more than compensated for by the ease with which information can be taken from the model. Producing drawn details to work from on site is relatively easy, as the hard work investment has already been done. It is easy to cut a section or view at every point that we or others feel requires looking at. While Integral is primarily a structural engineer, it seems a natural extension of our 3D modelling role to incorporate enabling works. Cross-fertilisation of skills usually benefits everyone.
As a last point, the most sophisticated software in the world cannot completely compensate for a lack of teamwork. It has been a privilege to get the opportunity to work with the same client, design team, and contractor, on three consecutive projects, and to be able to use those positive feedback loops to continuously improve and refine our 3D design process and outcomes. This rarely happens with today’s fragmented approach to procurement. Could hospital estates benefit from this by factoring in the scope for development and inter- company relationships when looking for development partners?
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