Birmingham is set to benefit from two new family-centred hospital buildings, with the local NHS Foundation Trust having awarded a design and technical consultancy service contract to architectural practice, BDP.
Along with its partners, BDP will develop design solutions for Birmingham Women’s and Children’s NHS Foundation Trust for modern, specialised paediatric and women’s healthcare facilities. The £442 m project will provide upgrades to emergency and theatre departments, increase intensive care capacity, and enhance inpatient wards and outpatient clinics.
Under the contract, a team of designers, engineers, planners, and cost consultants from BDP, Arup, Archus and WT Partnership will lead the redesign of Birmingham Women’s Hospital, opposite the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham on Mindelsohn Way, including the introduction of a new building. They will also design and engineer a new clinical building at Birmingham Children’s Hospital on Steelhouse Lane – adjacent to Waterfall House – a children’s healthcare building designed by BDP and completed in 2018.
The new, ‘innovative and energy-efficient’ Children’s Hospital will include emergency and theatre departments to replace existing services, additional paediatric intensive care capacity, and new inpatient wards. The Women’s Hospital project will enable the Trust to replace its inpatient wards, expand services for specific gynaecology theatres and birthing rooms, and ensure sufficient capacity within its outpatient clinics.
The design approach for both buildings will aim to meet the standards set by the Government’s ambitions to deliver a ‘net zero NHS’ by 2050. According to BDP, they will also enable healthcare workers ‘to deliver world-class outcomes for paediatric and maternity services at every level across the UK’.
Andrew Smith, BDP’s head of Healthcare, said: “The collaboration between Birmingham Women and Children’s NHS Foundation Trust, BDP, and our partners, will result in two world-leading healthcare facilities that will bring further international acclaim to a city is already leading the way in innovative healthcare buildings. Our experience in delivering the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham proves how creative design can produce hospitals which meet the complex, experiential, and organisational challenges of the healthcare sector.”
David Melbourne, the Trust’s Acting CEO, said: “We are proud of the amazing care our colleagues provide daily, but they do this in an estate well beyond its operational life. Our children and young persons’ services are being delivered on a site opened in 1897, and our Women’s Hospital (see photo) is more than 50 years’ old. These buildings are well past their natural life, and not suitable to providing the spaces and facilities we need for modern care. “Our Big Build proposal will provide value for money, and unlock huge potential for the development of our existing and new services – opening the door to a new wave of research and innovation, tapping into the many world-class individuals we are lucky to call colleagues.”
