Laing O’Rourke is using its DfMA (design for manufacture and assembly) process extensively to construct the £350m Grange University Hospital in south Wales.
The 55,000 sq m facility will comprise 4,000 digitally engineered concrete components, manufactured 200 miles away at the contractor’s Explore Industrial Park in Derbyshire. The products include 7,000 sq m of sandwich panels and 612 columns which are being delivered to the site near Cwmbran.
“The devil has always been in the detail, being able to visualise that detail helps everybody understand what we are trying to do,” says Katie Evans, Laing O’Rourke’s lead digital engineer on the project. “Then you can instantly communicate it to people, whether it’s the operations team we’re asking to install it or the buyer that we’re asking to go and procure it.”
Laing O’Rourke was appointed to the project last year and the Aneurin Bevan University Health Board estimates the hospital will open in 2021.
