The professional team delivering the emergency Nightingale Hospital at Harrogate Hospital has been announced.
The new ‘circa-500-bed’ facility, part of the Government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, will see the Harrogate Convention Centre in North Yorkshire converted to accommodate level three critical care beds in the Centre’s halls for the Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust.
BAM Construction, ranked independently as Yorkshire’s largest contractor, has been appointed as the main design and build contractor under ProCure 22, with the assistance of BAM Design – appointed to deliver structural engineering, and BAM’s specialist services engineering business. The lead architect on the project is BDP, which has worked on the creation of the emergency facility at London’s ExCeL Centre, while Silcock Leedham will provide services engineering, and Arcadis LLP project management and quantity surveying.
Paul Cleminson, Pre-Construction director for BAM Construction in the North East, said: “We have mobilised immediately with a team working in shifts around the clock, following Government guidance about safe working and delivering these emergency facilities to assist the effort to support our NHS. We’re very proud to be involved. I’m delighted to say we have first-rate partners, and that our extensive and recent experience of healthcare projects in the north of England will serve us well, having worked several times with Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust over the years.”
BAM and its team are converting eight halls to create suitable partitions, flooring, and the specialist mechanical and electrical zones and installations required for such an emergency facility. The team is working closely with medical staff and the Army. Following the works’ completion, BAM’s facilities management business will help maintain the facility to provide support and continuity. BAM expects to have the hospital available for use by Easter, with all construction having taken no longer than 14 days.
Elsewhere, BAM teams are on site at Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust and University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust providing the NHS with critical construction works for new and upgraded facilities. In Worcester, BAM is delivering a major ward refurbishment project, with the last phase of 23 beds due to complete in May. It is also providing a new oxygen cylinder compound, due for completion to coincide with the opening of the final ward at the end of May. Meanwhile in Southampton, the company is providing a new 22-bed general intensive care unit due to complete in September.
The company said: “We are also close to being engaged on two further emergency Nightingale hospitals, for which we are already drawing on what we are learning at Harrogate.”
