Haden Young takes the modular approach at Birmingham Hospital

Oh yes, we soon learnt from that alright. Sometimes they hadn’t even been plumbed in yet. Now we deliver them with the doors fitted and locked in case anyone gets caught out.” This was the answer to a question that may have been put to technical co-ordination manager Mark Hammonds purely in jest, but it seems that Haden Young really has been faced with the challenge of stopping rogue site workers doing their business in its bathroom/toilet pods.

Fortunately, this is one of the few problems the m&e firm has encountered when installing its composite bathroom modules. The gains are impressive, to say the least.

“There are lots of hidden benefits from manufacturing the pods in controlled factories,” says Hammonds. “With the Birmingham Hospital project, for example, you’re talking less plant on site, fewer operatives needed, a better level of health and safety and more recycling.”

Quite a relief, when you consider that Haden Young’s ambitious £233m Birmingham Hospital contract required that 650 sanitary units be fitted within what deputy project director Alasdair Loomes describes as “a very tight programme”.

And it’s not just the pods that are prefabricated. Risers and horizontal distribution modules, integrated modular ward walls, prewired distribution boards, Haden Young’s own fast, pluggable modular electrical system HY Wire and complete modularised plant rooms are all helping to get the job done quickly, yet to the highest of standards.

Loomes says: “Construction began in January 2006, and we got all the first-fix services in before the steel framework. Originally, we thought there would be about 500 m&e staff on site, but we only needed 250, due to the prefab route we took.”

Hammonds agrees. “Birmingham Hospital’s such a colossal job that you wouldn’t have finished it without opting for modular. If we hadn’t taken that approach, we would have needed an extra couple of hundred workers.”

The project is notable on two counts: the first new general hospital in Birmingham for 70 years and the largest community healthcare development outside London.

The site itself is a whopping 137 000 m2.

The three main hospital buildings stand proudly in line, their distinctive circular forms and hollow central courtyards suggesting that architect Nightingale Associates was granted more creative leeway than is customary for hospitals. Aesthetically and structurally it has paid off, but not without a little extra sweat and brain power from the m&e team.

Haden Young’s Modular Systems+ arm was able to conduct mock-ups of its services modules under factory conditions to ensure they fitted with the curve of the building. Sophisticated 3D CAD packages helped the team to deal with the unusual shape.

Birmingham Hospital is a joint venture between Balfour Beatty’s building arm and its Haden Young m&e division, which has helped all involved to co-ordinate the mammoth task.

“It made communication a lot easier. For example, we could go to the builders and say we needed height on the tower cranes and they’d actually listen,” says Loomes.

Crucially, the Haden Young team also had a lot of input early on in the project.

“When we were talking to the architects, we asked them to maintain consistency in ward layout and sizing so so we only had to have two different types of bathroom pods,” Loomes explains with detectable relief.

Haden Young opted for standard methods of construction within certain spaces, but the project directors were in for a a surprise.

“It took two years to convince the builders that modular is the way forward,” says Loomes. “But then, when we used traditional methods in certain places because the curve of the building presented difficulties, they said afterwards, ‘Don’t you ever do it traditionally again.’”

But every project has its idiosyncrasies, and unfortunately, the modular approach was not deemed possible throughout the hospital. With some reluctance, the team decided not to modularise the ductwork risers.

“It would have been difficult because the plant room was in the middle of the hospital. We couldn’t get access for modules beneath it. Looking back, though, we should have bitten the bullet, worked out the difficulties and got on with it,” admits Loomes.

The main hospital buildings are accompanied by three new mental health units, two on site and one nearby, on which Haden Young also worked its modular magic. These may be far more conventional-looking than the glamorous new core infirmary, but they have benefited from the same forward-thinking techniques.

Spending quality time

The m&e accounts for around 40% of the contract – around 15% higher than it would on other projects such as schools and commercial buildings, due to the array of specialist services that are required in a hospital environment.

Many service distribution modules have add-ons to allow for necessities such as medical gases and pneumatic tubes.

Time studies have shown that the 6 metre giant modules, which contain cable basket, insulated pipe and ductwork, take two workers just two days to fit. With traditional methods, this can take up to eight weeks.

According to Hammonds, however, the modules, which are produced at a rate of up to 100 a week at the Modular Systems+ factory, have a lead time of five weeks from receipt of construction drawings to delivery, so how exactly do the advantages of prefabrication manifest themselves on a project such as Birmingham Hospital?

Organisation, which leads to significant time savings, is a key factor.

“When a module lands, you’ve already got rid of four trades clamouring over each other on site,” explains Hammonds.

“We don’t have three deliveries a day coming onto site and the logistics hell that goes with that either,” he adds.

The 10 metre high-rise modules that Haden Young fitted at Birmingham were built at bench level and then lowered into place. The system took a little getting used to initially.

“That first one took us a day, but after that we were managing two a day. Using the traditional method, it would have taken us weeks, and all that time there would have been the danger of people falling down holes. The riser modules come with floors. They’re just magic health and safety-wise. We’ve lost a lot of people through risers over the years,” says Loomes.

Onsite health and safety is always a big concern, and Haden Young is currently aiming high by committing to Balfour Beatty’s Zero Harm policy, which aims to put an end to all worker fatalities, disabling injuries and harm to the public by 2012. The modular approach eliminates many of these risks.

All hot works for services are carried out in a controlled factory environment, which eliminates a major fire hazard. The only fixings needed on site are mechanical.

Workers who assemble the modules are required to log their names and details beforehand “so we can kick them up the backside if there are any leaks on site, because we know exactly who’s responsible,” laughs Hammonds.

“We test and insulate the modules at the factory too. Some competitors don’t,” he adds.

Testing bathroom modules that are designed exclusively for use within prisons sounds particularly exciting, and a pursuit that stressed office workers would probably pay good money for. Essentially, prison personnel enter with pick axes and try to smash their way out of the pods to assess their suitability.

Best of health

The Modular Systems+ factory that supplies Birmingham Hospital is run with painstaking orderliness, and this contributes to a better environmental policy, with less surplus.

“Offcuts can be wasteful. In the factory they are saved and then used for a project that they are the right size for,” says Hammonds.

In a medical environment, project managers have more than their own operatives’ health and safety to worry about. Air supply to the operating theatres at Birmingham Hospital uses a high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filtration system, which reduces the risk of patient infection by removing airborne pathogens that are contained in airborne diseases.

Airflow also has to be controlled more rigorously and is directed outwards from sterile rooms, which are ventilated to 35 Pascal to corridors that only reach 5 Pascal. More complex ventilation systems help prevent the spread of superbugs such as MRSA.

Haden Young’s integrated modular wall-panel system plays its part by minimising the number of areas where dust is likely to collect, but it also performs another vital function.

“Because you have the medical gases, nurse cords and lighting, you end up with a situation where everything is at the wrong height when you use trunking. We don’t have that problem,” explains Loomes.

The modular wall-panel system, which is unique to Haden Young, is delivered to site with all electrical and piped services installed. According to Hammonds, the firm was a pioneer from the start.

“We’ve taken offsite manufacturing to the pinnacle. A lot of people were putting a bit of basket on a tray off site, and we thought, ‘Why don’t we put the whole thing, with all the components, in a box?’ Nobody else did what we did,” he says.

On the Birmingham Hospital project, there’s something of a community feel to the whole process as its modules don’t have far to travel. The factory, one of four run by Modular Systems+, is based in nearby West Bromwich.

A home-grown West Midlander himself, Hammonds is incredibly proud of the plant, which he describes as “my baby, since I was dragged away from my position as foreman”.

So why doesn’t the technical co-ordinator have a star role in the short film that the firm uses to sell its forward-thinking approach?

Hammonds raises an eyebrow. “It’s because of my Brummie accent, of course!” he quips.