The Portakabin Group has secured a £10m contract for the offsite construction of two new buildings which will provide clinical services during the 3Ts redevelopment of the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton.
Procured under the ProCure21 framework, the contract, which uses a Yorkon offsite solution, includes construction of the Portakabin Group’s first six-storey building for use within the health sector.
This is a highly-complex contract which will involve constructing two Yorkon buildings with detailed technical specifications on an extremely-constrained and busy hospital site in a short timeframe and simultaneously
Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust has appointed Laing O’Rourke as the supply chain lead for the 3Ts redevelopment programme, which will provide new facilities for general medical, specialist tertiary, trauma, and teaching services locally and across the region.
The two modular buildings are due for completion in autumn 2015 and will provide purpose-designed accommodation for clinical services, which will, in turn, create space for the site redevelopment while ensuring continuity of care.
The six-storey building will house services such as nuclear medicine, physiotherapy and rheumatology outpatients, offices, a radio pharmacy, and a rehabilitation gymnasium. It will remain on site until stage one of the 3Ts redevelopment is completed in 2019.
The facility is designed to accommodate cardiac, gamma and specialist CT machines on the ground floor. The second building will provide three levels of ward space and is located in a semi-enclosed courtyard on a steel transfer platform above the existing A&E department. It will remain on site until a new cancer centre is completed towards the end of the redevelopment.
The offsite approach will allow the constrained courtyard site to be utilised and the Yorkon modules will be craned into position over a plantroom building.This operation will be carried out over a number of weekends to minimise disruption to patient care.
By using a Yorkon modular solution for both schemes, the facilities will be built to permanent standards, with a 60-year design life and in compliance with NHS requirements, but have the flexibility to be removed, recycled and relocated to another site if necessary. Offsite construction is also reducing the programme time to allow the early commencement of the main redevelopment.
The steel-framed modules will be delivered to the site around 35% fitted out, and the first building will be handed over less than six months after the units arrive.
The clinical building is also our first six-storey scheme in the healthcare sector, which demonstrates the advanced performance capabilities of our offsite solutions
Commenting on the project, Simon Ambler, director of the Portakabin Group, said: “This is a highly-complex contract which will involve constructing two Yorkon buildings with detailed technical specifications on an extremely-constrained and busy hospital site in a short timeframe and simultaneously.”
“The clinical building is also our first six-storey scheme in the healthcare sector, which demonstrates the advanced performance capabilities of our Yorkon offsite solutions.”
Duane Passman, director of 3Ts at Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust, added: “These two buildings are crucial to unlocking the space for the main hospital redevelopment to go ahead and to providing the highest standards of care during that programme.“Some of our existing facilities are nearly 200 years old – among the oldest in the NHS, and can no longer meet the needs of our patients or clinical teams. When complete, it will significantly improve patient care and experience.”
The Yorkon clinical buildings will require 90-minute fire protection to the structural elements and the very close proximity of both schemes to the adjacent hospital buildings requires additional detailing to meet fire separation requirements.
