The 440-bed Hairmyres and Stonehouse acute general hospital in East Kilbride is due for completion on 1 December 2000, with a scheduled opening date of mid-February 2001. Due to be the first completed in Scotland under the pfi scheme, it will replace the existing hospital on the same site.
Construction started on 1 May 1998 and the first stage handover is scheduled for March 2000. As such the project is currently running six months ahead of schedule, due mainly to new steelwork construction techniques. The consortium for the project includes Kier Construction and Innisfree, and has an initial 30-year concession period. The m&e contractor is Crown House Engineering and the principal funder, Barclays Bank.
According to Archie Stark, director of Crown House responsible for Scotland, the biggest benefit of pfi is the lead-in time. As m&e contractor, Crown House was appointed much earlier than in a traditional project. “Instead of a six day lead in you have a six month lead in or longer, so we’re able to plan better and work very closely with the designers…to identify and solve problems before going to site. You develop a very early common commitment and are able to see the goal.” One issue that came through in this project was that of standardisation. “[NHS]Trusts seem unable to standardise,” said Archie Stark, “They still administer design much the same as they did 20-30 years ago, via data sheets. This is done on the principle that everyone has the right to examine each room individually in terms of where they want to put each item of equipment.” This can result in wasted time, effort and subsequently, money. It also means that a standard six-bed ward in one hospital is vastly different to a six-bed ward in another, regardless of them providing identical facilities, causing problems for future designs and staff.
An innovative method suggested by Keir to assist the smooth running of the scheme was the use of a demonstration ward. Early in the construction process a complete ward was built in the existing building. This gave both client and builders a practical way of visualising what they were trying to achieve, and saved time when various options eg for the curtain arrangements had to be selected. This ward also helped the engineers optimise the positioning of equipment, and valve positions, for example, were adjusted after trials here.
“Any construction contract is a balance between our need to have information to build and the customer’s needs for flexibility. I think PFI is one step forward to getting a better balance to that,” Stark concludes.
Source
Building Sustainable Design
