East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust had scope to extend their current operating services and provide further operating theatres to the Kent and Canterbury Hospital site. This would allow the hospital to cater for a larger patient intake.
MTX delivered the project over various phases. In order to proceed with the delivery of the new 4 orthopaedic operating theatres, MTX first had to carry out the construction of a new medical physics building, the asbestos removal and full demolition works of an existing office block and the refurbishment of a full day care surgery department.
The new theatre complex links directly into the hospital’s current ward department and in close proximity to the recently completed day care surgery. 42 modules were used in total for the theatre new build.
The single storey facility houses the 4 orthopaedic operating theatres each with dedicated prep and anaesthetic, a bright and spacious reception and waiting area, 8 bed recovery bay, offices, theatre store, staff rest and all necessary ancillaries. A dedicated top floor plant room was provided to support the whole scheme. Each of the 4 theatres are equipped with 3m MAT ultra clean canopies, with integrated multi-movement pendants. The integrated pendants allowed MTX to maximise the size of the canopy, whilst ensuring that all 4 theatres fit within the site constraints.
4 dedicated duplex pumps were provided, as well as a triplex vacuum and triplex surgical air plant, with duplex filters. These were designed to provide a high level of resilience.
The building was completely and mechanically ventilated and the design included 5 AHUs; 1 for each theatre and 1 for the recovery and ancillary space, and the modification of the existing system to refeed some of the refurbished areas. The project was accelerated by prefabricating elements of the build, including pump skids.
The modules for the scheme were constructed on top of a cast in situ ground floor slab, ensuring compliance with the structural response factor. The slab was power floated to the highest level of accuracy (SR1), to ensure a perfect finish.
The day surgery refurbishment works had to be carried out within a strict timescale when the building was free of patients and staff. Therefore, works in this area were carried out after hours and on weekends.
The project team were also working to an extremely tight programme and in order to achieve the required handover date, MTX’s site remained operational 7 days a week. The project team built a strong relationship with the client and ensured that client satisfaction was achieved, both aesthetically and in terms of practicality.
From this project MTX also learnt that the integrating pendants within the canopies allows you to fit bigger canopies into a small room and reduces the risk of clashes with other services when installing on site.
In addition, we concluded that the co-ordination of all the ceiling hatches within the theatre room is quite difficult. From our Lessons Learnt and Best Practice meeting following this project, we identified that it may be worthwhile to consider the use of washable ceiling tiles on future similar projects, to give better flexibility.
