The Fast Park Group has recently successfully designed, supplied, and installed, a new single deck demountable car park for Stepping Hill Hospital in Stockport, having won the contract from Stockport NHS Trust for its ability to deliver the new parking facility quickly, and at a competitive price, its strong track record, and its excellent post-construction support.
Completed in just 60 days, the work involved not only assembling and installing, but also deck surface finishing, the new Rowan Park facility.
The tender required the creation of 55-60 additional car parking spaces on a demountable structure as an addition to an existing surface car park completed in 2005. The Trust required dismountable solution to double the existing parking capacity to address rising demand, but with a design that would allow redevelopment in the future should parking demand subsequently reduce.
Fast Park says one of the key benefits it offered was its ‘one-stop shop’ project management. This, as it puts it, ‘side-stepped the burden’ of the traditional design and build process, where, for instance, designers and contractors have to be controlled, coordinated, and paid. Project management for the Trust was also simplified due to ‘off the shelf’ nature of the Fast Park product, and the fact that its estates team could deal directly with Fast Park project team, with no need to appoint a separate project management firm.
Features of the ‘all-in-one’ car parking deck, and the project overall, include:
• A surface finished with polyurethane resin, an anti-skid and anti-slip system reportedly ‘ideal for waterproofing’.
• A two-way ramp.
• A BS-compliant vehicle restraint system on the deck and ramps.
• A ground and top floor lighting system featuring emergency lighting.
• Integral drainage.
• ‘Anti-fire’ protection in accordance with Building Control Requirements.
• DDA-compliant emergency pedestrian staircases.
• Green perimeter concrete washed gravel cladding panels.
• Removal of any existing green bed, and refitting of soft landscape post-installation.
• Provision of bay markings, lines, and signs, and removal of redundant marking.
• Lightning protection.
While the construction of ‘traditional’ parking facilities on hospital sites often creates inconvenience to users, and the resulting loss of spaces contributes to existing parking and traffic congestion, Fast Park’s GoLive system sees the deck assembled via a ‘compartmental progression’ across the car park, using only a truck-mounted crane, a small fork-lift, and hand tools. Fast Park explains: “With no use of large cranes or plant, there is much less of the disruption normally associated with traditional building.”
At Stepping Hill, a specially trained workforce worked within isolated work areas, protected with hoardings and warning signs, and outside peak hours for hospital traffic. This minimised disruption to normal traffic, ongoing parking operations, and pedestrian movement. All measures were taken to reduce noise, dust, and other nuisances, in full compliance with Health and Safety Regulations.
Fast Park’s careful monitoring and measurement of the noise created by the construction work, meanwhile, indicated that noise levels were both
‘within the typical acceptable range for daytime construction noise’, and ‘insignificant in terms of contributing to the general ambient noise levels from other hospital traffic and other local noise sources’
