TPS Delivers Civil and Structural Engineering Services to Bristol's Southmead Hospital

Upon its completion in 2013, Southmead Hospital’s main building will have a wide range of specialist regional services, which include A&E, neurosciences, plastic surgery, orthopaedics, pathology, and renal services, to which they will receive referrals from all over the UK and overseas. Located approximately two kilometres north of Bristol city centre, the new hospital will provide world-class healthcare services to a local population of around half a million residents when completed in 2015.

The new 768-bed state-of-the-art Acute Hospital, complete with an integrated community hospital, is to be situated on a vast seventeen-hectare brown-field site within the restricted limits of the existing Southmead Hospital.

TPS is helping to transform healthcare in and around Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire by delivering civil and structural engineering services to Bristol’s major Southmead Hospital redevelopment project.

As Structural and Civil Engineers for the project, TPS has provided engineering support services to Carillion, the main contractor, from the project’s conception in August 2007, as well as being the CDM Co-ordinator.

TPS worked with Carillion and the design in the early stages to phase the construction in order to allow the new hospital facilities to be occupied ahead of demolishing the remainder of the existing hospital. TPS’s Associate Director, Jack Mitchell explains:

“The local community’s huge dependence on the existing hospital facilities meant we were responsible for delivering a solution that met the needs of all the hospital’s stakeholders, not just the client’s requirements. We have subsequently taken great care in coordinating the structural design to enable the building to be extended at a later date whilst we organise the temporary works and construction logistics to suit the phase building.”

Advanced works began on site in August 2009 to provide modular temporary hospital buildings, to refurbish and reconfigure a number of the existing hospital’s buildings, to establish temporary car parking facilities, and to divert services in preparation for main Acute Hospital’s construction.

In August 2010, phase one of the new Acute Hospital’s two-phase construction commenced after demolition of existing hospital facilities. The main hospital building has a footprint/floorspace of 112,000m2, ranging from three to seven storeys. It comprises of two main building elements, which will be joined by a full height glazed public concourse. The roof will consist of a mix of flat slab and steel pitched aluminum, with some elements of green roofing incorporated.

The new Acute Hospital is intended to enable clinicians to provide efficient, high quality specialist care in a well-planned environment, as Mitchell explains: “Concentrating acute services on one site will avoid unnecessary duplication and enable clinicians to make rapid and effective decisions in consultation with their colleagues in allied fields.”

Community facilities - including rehabilitation beds, outpatients, minor injury care and diagnostic facilities - will also be integrated at Southmead.

“The new hospital has been designed as a landmark building. Its size and complexity have challenged the structural design of the building in meeting the architectural aspirations and clinical requirements of the building. In order to achieve these requirements within the demands of the confined site and construction programme, close liaison and coordination between the NHS Trust, Carillion, the design team and subcontractors have been an essential part of the process,” explains Mitchell.

Phase two which consists of the visitors’ multi-storey car park, office sleeve and CSSD, external car parks and helipad is scheduled to be completed in 2015, after demolition of the remaining facilities adjacent to the New Acute Hospital.