£130 million
25,000m² (barn theatre suite 370m2)
Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust
Integrated Health Projects
IBI Group
Thomasons
London
2018
- Engineering services design
- WINNER 'Estates & Facilities Team of the Year'
IHEEM Awards 2019 - WINNER 'Estates & Facilities Team of the Year'
Building Better Healthcare Awards 2019
In 2014, Barnet and Chase Farm Hospital became part of the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust. One of the first commitments was to redevelop Chase Farm Hospital, to deliver 21st Century healthcare and provide world class care close to where patients reside.
We were delighted to have been appointed in December 2014 as designers in the Integrated Health Projects P21+ team for the £130m project.
Integral to this exciting scheme, was theatre suites providing four standard theatre including one with a UCV hood, as well as a four-table barn theatre.
As there was no clear HTM 03-01 guidance at the time for the design of barn theatres, we set out user friendly strategies to enable both technical and non-technical stakeholders to follow, enabling brief sign off in line with the programme.
This proactive approach with the Trust and P21+ team enabled the following challenges to be overcome:
- Control of four dedicated ventilation systems into one space so they operated without conflict
- Maintaining the pressure regime across the vast area and dealing with plant failures
- Maintaining pressure regime through turn down of any of the single ventilation plant.
Our first step was to produce a simplistic diagrammatical layout to identify the ventilation pressure regime under normal operating conditions.
We reviewed this with the Trust simulating various scenarios under planned maintenance and failure to understand the impact on the theatre environment to satisfy ourselves the design conditions would be met.
Following this briefing stage, we carried out the detailed design which introduced its own logistical challenges in terms of coordinating all services within the celling voids with the UCV hoods, supports, architectural and structural designs. Working collaboratively in BIM Level 2 the team demonstrated full coordination.
This resulted us subsequently being engaged by the chosen UCV hood specialist and MEP subcontractors to finalise the ventilation strategy to inform the installation proposals.
Taking a hands-on approach through the installation and commissioning periods we assisted the facility being delivered on programme, demonstrating compliance with all HTM pressure requirements, as well as proving that the design achieved the HTM ventilation cascade requirements.
