Operating theatres and patient recovery facilities at a private hospital in Bath are undergoing a £3.5 m major refurbishment.
The five-phase project will see three operating theatres at Circle Health Group’s Bath Clinic revamped, and a fourth created in an existing endoscopy suite. The associated patient recovery and anaesthetic rooms will also be transformed, alongside the creation of new staff changing and toilet areas and the installation, in a new roof, of the significant infrastructure needed to power and operate the state-of-the-art equipment. The work is being undertaken by Beard Construction, and three of the four operating theatres will remain in use while it is being carried out. The team is working with a range of expert sub-contractors providing specialist equipment including medical gas supplies, surgeons’ panels, hospital building management system panels, and nurse call systems for the project. Three of the theatres sit in the basement of a two-storey building, with patient recovery facilities on the floor above.
Beard has also re-felted, insulated, and re-purposed, the crinkle-tin roof above this building to hold the new infrastructure needed to run the operating theatres and recovery areas below.
This roof area will also house new a standalone air-heating unit as well as parallel unique and isolated power supplies. The installation will involve several 300-tonne crane lifts, as the control systems are lowered into place.
The project is currently in phase one, with phase zero seeing the roof conversion and installation of system infrastructure, and the standalone endoscopy unit converted to a fully-fledged operating theatre. The remaining four phases will now work through the conversion of the existing three operating theatres.
Commenting on the project, Jamie Harwood, director at Beard Construction, said: “To carry out this extensive refurbishment alongside, or above, a working clinical environment is exceptionally challenging, but we’re working with the hospital staff and our sub-contractors to make it happen. The new facilities will transform the operating environment and facilities for patients and staff at Bath Clinic.”
