CIOB Awards 2022: Healthcare

Project: Taunton Diagnostic Centre
Scope: Refurbishment of fire HQ as diagnostics centre, completed in 40 weeks
Client: Rutherford Diagnostics
Contract: JCT 2016, design and build
Value: £4.6m

Daryl Parker had 40 weeks to transform a fire control centre building, unused since it was constructed in 2007, into a diagnostics centre. He started on site six weeks after a tender interview for which he’d had two days’ notice. And he was subsequently asked to move the handover date forward by two weeks midway through this challenging and ambitious programme.

Despite many stakeholders considering this to be unachievable, Daryl’s focused, logical and intelligent leadership delivered this major and complex scheme to create a diagnostics centre within the whistle-stop timeframe. He commissioned equipment and scheduled high-impact activities such as floor laying, ceiling closure and high-pressure pipe testing out of hours.

Good existing service information was unavailable before site start. But he was able to contain the budget by identifying many reusable power, water, data, ventilation and drainage elements. He also identified credible and intelligent solutions for installing specialist services – medical gases, nurse call systems, AV equipment, uninterruptible and isolated power supplies, and chilled water for the MRI scanner – into the very small spaces of the building.

The risk was enormous. If the services weren’t ready for teams from Europe to install the scanners on the scheduled date, it could have delayed the facility becoming operational for up to six months. But Daryl aligned the re-engineering of the building to the installation of the client’s specialist equipment – x-ray, ultrasound, CT and MRI scanners – and hit that ‘impossible’ deadline.

Project: Royal Brompton Hospital Imaging Centre, Chelsea, London
Scope: Construction of four-level diagnostic unit, completed in 143 weeks
Client: Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS Foundation Trust
Contract: NEC, design and build
Value: £28m

To create this new diagnostic unit, Matt Davis had to construct a new building with four storeys, two underground. With the basement sandwiched between two existing buildings, he had to support live hospital buildings and the hospital’s sole access road while constructing it.

An existing building had to be partially demolished before the new build could link to it. When the portion requiring demolition grew, Matt brought forward the piling and pile caps so that a new steel portal frame could take the load of the existing building.

Matt also had to contend with a flood less than a week after the installation of three MRI scanners. He led a recovery plan which removed 33,000 litres of standing water and put a remediation programme in place within an hour.