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Client: St Helens and Knowsley
Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust
Location: St Helens,
Merseyside
Services: Architecture
Sector: Healthcare
Contract Type: PFI
Project Value: £100m
Start: 2002
Completion: 2008
Awards: Shortlisted for the Building
Better Healthcare Award 2010
The Project
Completed in 2008, the £100m St Helens Diagnostic
& Treatment Centre (DTC) signals the future for a
significant proportion of modern healthcare provision. Acting as an
outpatients-style treatment centre, rather than a 24/7 hospital, it
is designed around a dramatic central atrium which makes the whole
building intuitively easy to move around, while being sympathetic
to, and integrating with, the local landscape.
The overall concept is based on maximising contact with nature
light and art thereby creating a hospital which does not have an
institutional healthcare feel but is a relaxing space more in
keeping with public cultural facilities. The brown field site (a
filled in quarry) has also been extensively landscaped to create a
welcoming parkland setting which is enjoyed by staff and visitors
alike.
The project features something which is often missing from major
projects – cooperative input from ‘end-users’ including nurses,
doctors and patients. As a result, the building has a welcoming
environment which is intuitively easy to understand and use.
Patient pathways have been designed to be as short as possible
while a centralised reception and administration area manages the
whole building from a location immediately adjacent to the main
entrance.
Individual clinic waiting areas have also been combined into a
light and welcoming internal atrium filled with natural light and
enjoying views into attractively landscaped courtyards. Key
benefits of the design strategy include:
- Minimised travel distances for patients and staff;
- A modular design concept, which maximises flexibility and
adaptability;
- Clear intuitive way finding;
- Each clinic has a 'meet & greet' touch-down point and
naturally lit waiting spaces with views into attractively
landscaped courtyards;
- A high quality entrance café providing refreshments for
patients, visitors and staff, and complimenting the larger
restaurant on the lower ground floor;
- A total of 50 general consult/exam rooms, in three 12-room
clusters and one 14-room cluster, with all clusters capable of
being subdivided to maximise clinic scheduling flexibility, and
which can also be used flexibly, between specialties, to optimise
their use.
The DTC involved a host of innovative building and design
processes that are changing the way we plan, design and build
hospitals and healthcare centres across the UK. From off-site
construction of bathrooms to a pioneering building shell
manufacturing process, the processes ensured that huge time savings
were made on the construction programme while also raising the
building’s longevity past the 60 year mark.
With Taylor Woodrow (Vinci) as the design and build contractor,
the offsite construction was undertaken by a number of key members
of their supply chain. These included NG Bailey, which fabricated a
significant proportion of the engineering services from its £5
million, 53,500 sq ft facility in Bradford; and Panaloc, which
manufactured the various 'wet area' rooms or pods, at its hi-tech
manufacturing facility in Manchester.
The concept for the offsite construction process was simple –
construct complex features such as piping, bathrooms and boiler
rooms in an offsite CADCAM driven standalone format. These ‘pods’
were then simply slotted into the building, resulting in reduced
onsite congestion, improved health and safety, lessened
environmental impact, quicker project delivery and improved
co-ordination between plumbers, designers etc. What’s more,
everything was completely pre-tested to ensure improved quality
while sustainable principles were consistently applied - including
the packaging in which the pods are delivered to site.
90% of high-level engineering services were
also prefabricated offsite. In fact, a team of just six was able to
complete a staggering 200m of fully-functioning and wired corridor
in less than a week.
As is often the case with innovative projects
such as these, what might seem like a minor point is also highly
significant. Leaking water is a curse on any building, especially
hospitals - recent estimates assert that historically 90% of
hospital shower rooms have failed within the first year. Now, with
the computer cutting and fitting of the precisely designed pods,
the seals and materials will remain in top shape for at least 60
years.