Technical

Me and my project: The Christie Hospital, Manchester

Leigh Carter FCIOB, senior project manager with Mace, shares his experience at The Christie Hospital, Manchester.

Leigh Carter

The Christie NHS Foundation Trust is a national cancer specialist based in Manchester.

Mace has provided the Christie with project management services for the £8m Integrated Procedures Unit which saw the creation over two years of a new build extension while the hospital remained operational. The build, provides 1,000m2 of clinical space and adjoined 350m2 of refurbished space to the existing ward block at first floor level.

The IPU provides a new facility that co-locates a number of services including radiology, the procedure unit, pain service, plastic surgery, endoscopy and day case surgery.

The new build extension created 900 m² of shell space at ground floor level that would later be the new main entrance, with retail units (M&S Café and WH Smith) whilst providing extensive seating and waiting areas for visitor and patients.

Shell space on the first floor became tbe £2.1m clinical trials extension (CTE), project connecting to a full refurbishment of the Clinical Trials Unit.

I worked closely with the project team to drive innovation, manage stakeholder engagement and incorporate significant change to the project, namely the incorporation of the clinical trials extension and ground floor main entrance schemes.

The key challenge for the project was working in a live hospital environment and adjacent to live theatres and key outpatient units. The project was constructed at the main access node for the hospital, so logistics and management of traffic and pedestrian access externally coinciding with ever changing internal routes through the construction phases was critical.

Part of the project was a new 900m2 entrance

In my role as project manager I was at the forefront of managing the key challenges. I established weekly stakeholder engagement meetings to ensure that everyone was informed ahead of time about the construction works and how it impacted on the operation of the hospital; this also aligned with media updates via the Christie online presence as well as letter drops to local residents.

Prior to the construction works I organised and facilitated a drop-in communication session for staff, local residents and patients to attend. The stakeholder engagement has proved successful as all construction work fronts were taken and delivered as programmed with no complaints or disruption to the hospital operation.

The use of BIM and ‘fly through’ videos of the units before construction allowed the users to visualise how the units would be operated. This led to slight design amendments that at the design stage were simple and cost neutral to make, but had they not been raised at that stage would have added significant cost and time impact to the project.

I am delighted that we have created such a fantastic new unit for The Christie. The project team worked with a partnering ethos in mind and achieved an excellent end product within challenging constraints.