A £10million project for Ashford and St Peter’s Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has been delivered by Premier Modular and provides a new priority assessment unit.
Premier Modular was appointed as the principal contractor for the 62-bed, priority assessment unit at St Peter’s Hospital in Chertsey, supported by delivery partner Claritas. Faced with increasing patient numbers and tight deadlines, the Trust needed the new building to support increased demand, especially during the busy winter period.
St Peter’s chose to fast track the building project by using offsite construction, which reduced the overall programme time by nine months. Designed by BDP and delivery architects P+HS, the new space purposefully reflects the existing environment, while matching the hospital’s modern needs, ensuring seamless integration.
The new facility was linked to the emergency department with 62 patient bays, alongside nurse stations, staff rooms, seminar rooms, laundry and clean utilities and kitchenettes for staff. The new unit provides updated technology, with datacomms, security systems, CCTV and nurse call systems, which are all fully integrated with the main hospital. “This project shows how striking and unique architectural design, that is also in keeping with its surroundings, can be successfully married with efficient delivery via offsite construction, bringing many benefits including speed and quality,” said Akshay Khera, Architecture Director, BDP.
The offsite solution was engineered to fit seamlessly into the existing hospital, maintaining flows between the existing facilities and the new unit, with continuous level floors throughout. Externally, the assessment unit is finished with vertical rainscreen cladding in grey and brickwork to complement adjacent buildings.
Andrew Grimes, Assistant Director of Property and Capital Development added: “This project responds to the urgent national need to increase capacity in emergency care. Offsite construction allows us to add space on our hospital campus more quickly. We estimate Premier reduced time on site by around six months and the overall programme by nine months. Less time on site also means less disruption to patient care, which is always a priority for hospital building projects. “Premier had the capabilities to meet the technical constraints of this site and the brief very well, particularly to provide seamless connections at two levels to maintain patient flows and allow us to move beds easily between this building and the existing facilities. Premier was also the only offsite specialist who was able to meet our module height requirement without the addition of ramps. And the lightweight nature of steel-framed modular construction minimised groundworks which had time and cost savings. Premier demonstrated the flexibility and design capabilities to engineer a bespoke solution for this challenging site, with all the speed and value benefits of offsite construction.”
To support the Trust’s sustainability targets, the building envelope has been designed to be thermally efficient to reduce running costs and carbon emissions. It incorporates technology, such as solar control glass, integral brise soleil sun shading and a building energy management system (BeMS) to optimise energy usage. “This scheme was ideally suited to offsite construction,” said Dan Allison, Divisional Director, Premier Modular. “It allowed the Trust to meet an urgent need to expand capacity for emergency care and the development of a very constrained site. The new building has been constructed in a courtyard and close to the emergency department, which required careful logistical planning from our project team. We maximised construction and fitout work offsite to radically reduce disruption to patient care and were only on site for around six months to produce a facility for the trust.”
For more information visit: www.premiermodular.co.uk
