The use of prefabrication has reduced build times on site by two-thirds at a new NHS treatment Centre.

Patients awaiting treatment in Portsmouth may get their appointments sooner than they thought thanks to the use of prefabrication techniques at a new treatment centre.

On-site construction time at the St Mary's NHS Treatment Centre was reduced to just six months, slashing two-thirds off the 18 months that using traditional construction methods would have taken.

One of the areas of saving was lighting. A total of 175 emergency light fittings have been installed into a variety of recessed luminaires. To ensure these could be integrated into a single control system the electrical contractor Connect 2 stipulated the use of TridonicAtco ballasts.

Each luminaire contains a Tridonic EM PRO Dali operated emergency inverter. This gives full details of the status of the lamp, battery, inverter and charging unit. When combined with WM WinPRO software the facilities management team can ensure compliance with lighting legislation without the need to check each luminaire visually during system testing, giving further time and cost savings on future maintenance.

All the luminaires are linked to a central pc via the same structured cabling network serving the hospital's computer network; four dedicated port hubs separate this from the main network. This configuration meant that no extra cabling was needed, saving costs and on site time at installation. Hayes Controls and Test undertook the commissioning.

Source

Electrical and Mechanical Contractor