‘Landmark’ CCU completed at Oxford’s John Radcliffe

A new 48-bedded Critical Care building at Oxford’s John Radcliffe Hospital, funded by the Department of Health and Social Care, and built by MTX, for Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (OUH), has recently been handed over. An extremely rapid design and planning process, the ‘hybrid’ MMC construction method, excellent collaboration, and 14-hour site working, seven days a week, saw it take just 15 months to get the project from initial design to handover. HEJ editor, Jonathan Baillie, who visited the site, reports.

The new Critical Care Unit Unit, funded by the Department of Health and Social Care to the tune of £24 m, has been built both as part of a regional approach for managing critical care demand and activity through the COVID-19 pandemic – supporting and alleviating future seasonal pressures, and to provide a ‘super surge centre’ in the event of future pandemic needs. The impressive structure - at five storeys, believed to be the UK’s tallest MMC healthcare facility built to date - is formed from 148 offsite-manufactured modules brought to site by low-loader and craned into position floor by floor, before being fitted with flooring, glazing, roofing, and extensive M&E services, on site

This ‘hybrid’ MMC working method enabled the steel-framed building to be completed in just 15 months. MTX says building a Critical Care Unit with such complex services requirements using traditional construction methods would have taken ‘anything up to three years’. Despite the pandemic’s challenges, the CCU was handed over to the Trust in February, slightly delayed but in budget, and will offer significantly more modern and fit-for-purpose accommodation for critical care patients, and a muchimproved working environment for nurses and clinicians, than the hospital’s existing 16-bedded AICU on Level 1 of the main John Radcliffe Hospital building.