Integral Engineering Design has worked alongside the Royal United Hospitals (RUH) NHS Foundation Trust in Bath on three new building projects over the past five years. Claire Thomas, a director at Integral, explains how Building Information Modelling (BIM) and 3D modelling (‘a kind of Virtual Reality’) have played a central role in the design of the buildings above ground, and, increasingly, also with the enabling works that are required when developing an existing hospital site.
This technology also uses 3D scanning techniques to identify and evaluate site constraints. ‘Whole projects are being planned, designed, coordinated, and built, in a virtual environment before construction’.
The Royal United Hospital opened on its present site in Combe Park, Bath in December 1932, and over the decades has significantly grown and developed. It survived the war, and saw the birth of the National Health Service in 1948, which heralded a period of expansion, including departments from elsewhere in Bath. The Ear, Nose and Throat Hospital relocated to the RUH in 1959, followed by the Eye Infirmary in 1973.
This organic redevelopment, combined with the complex servicing arrangements required of a major healthcare provider, make constructing new buildings quite a challenge. The Trust’s ambitious masterplan for the next decades requires a significant amount of existing accommodation to be decanted and demolished to allow for the creation of state-of-the art new facilities, including a pharmacy, therapies centre, and cancer centre. This has meant a reorganisation of site-wide services, particularly below ground, and naturally to keep the hospital site ‘live’ at all times.
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