Patient privacy, dignity and ultimately the sensitivity to working within a live hospital is vital. Our decade of service at James Paget University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has taught us that communication, safety, engagement and care for the environment is the absolute priority.
The timber solution means the team can deploy the structural support mechanism at pace, yet being flexible around the changing landscape of a live hospital.
For example, there have been numerous occasions where the challenges of COVID, patient surges or emergency operations have needed the construction team to re-programme the sequence of works, and thanks to the speed and flexibility of the solution, it has been possible to work this around the hospital.
Over the last ten years, Morgan Sindall Construction has worked across the James Paget Estates to upgrade, refurbish or extend numerous areas of the hospital.
From major theatres to a modular emergency department extension deployed in a matter of weeks, the team has learned just how important it is to work around the live hospital.
For us its so important for a contractor to have a flexible approach. Right at the top of the list is the ability to understand how critical the patient outcomes and hospital operation is. Constant communication to build that level of trust is key.”
Morgan Sindall Construction have kept the same experienced team deployed at the hospital for the last decade, supplemented by new additions who are trained up for the sensitivity of acute care delivery.
The method of works for the RAAC planking project has been sensitively programmed to work around the live hospital.
The first key to success was the hospital making a strategic decision to allocate 12 beds for the project – this means they are able to keep 12 beds vacant to be able to move around the hospital for the works to be carried out.
Whilst there has to be flexibility in this, the team have then worked closely with the estates team and department heads to be ready to work in any area at short notice.
Careful planning them means they can deploy the structural repairs with short and medium-term collaborative plans with each individual department, and undertake the works in small work areas (right down to individual bed bays).
Running concurrently with this, the team also has alternative unoccupied rooms as contingency against unplanned hospital clinical events which means planned areas are unable to be vacated.
Having a contractor on site undertaking other capital projects has proved to be a big enabler in the success so far – it means the contractor can be far more flexible in how they deploy their workforce around the hospital. If we didn’t have such a collaborative relationship it simply wouldn’t work for either party, so that trust and partnership has been critical.”
