After less than five months on site, the Portakabin Group has handed over a £2 million, four-storey building for office support staff at the University Hospital Southampton, which will also create space for further development.
The new building was needed to provide purposed-designed, permanent business support offices and meeting space for around 85 staff from the Medical Physics and Dietetics teams relocating from outdated temporary facilities. That accommodation could then be demolished to allow construction of a new sevenstorey car park to begin. The new office building’s upper two floors will provide additional space for the Trust’s future expansion without further impact on the hospital site.
Appointed as design and build contractor, Portakabin manufactured the 1,300 m2 facility using a Yorkon off-site solution. The ‘extremely constrained’ site, in the centre of the hospital, fronts a busy road, and adjoins clinical buildings. Fast completion was essential so that work could rapidly start on the car park.
Portakabin undertook complex logistics, and meticulous planning, to manage traffic flows and maintain constant access for bus and ambulance routes, and for around 800 deliveries each day along the adjacent road. Due to the severely restricted working area, the Yorkon building modules were craned into place around 70 per cent fitted out, with partitions, plumbing, and electrics, pre-installed.
Neil Haskell, senior project manager at the University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust, said: “The restricted time to build this scheme was the key driver for modular construction. Site-based building methods could not have delivered the building in the timeframe. The space was extremely limited, and thus lent itself well to moving as much of the construction into the factory as possible. The use of a Yorkon solution also saw much less disruption, because most of the fitting out was done off site, and we were able to maintain access 24/7.”
Portakabin worked on the project with Interserve Prime, a joint venture Commercial Estates Development Partnership (CEDP) established with the Trust to develop a programme of new hospital facilities. Ben Gwilliam, development manager at Interserve Prime, said: “This scheme was on the critical path for a wider project, and so was very programme-driven. We needed to have the new offices fully operational as soon as possible for the relocation of staff from various departments. Portakabin delivered the building on time, and met all the functionality and layout requirements in an extremely tight timescale. This allowed us to progress other essential development works, to the benefit of patients and staff. We have been very impressed with the Portakabin team throughout. They provided the full range of construction services, including design, groundworks, and fitting out. We would certainly recommend Yorkon off-site solutions and the services and approach from Portakabin, to others.”
