No drama in fast-track theatre conversion

Pulling up multi-layer 1930s-laid parquet flooring, erecting extensive steelwork to provide structural and services support, and knocking through sizeable walls while minimising disruption to adjacent services, were among the challenges successfully met. Jonathan Baillie reports.

The new 164 m2 ultra-clean theatre operating theatre suite, which MTX completed and handed over to the Heatherwood and Wexham Park Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust on time and on budget in just 14 weeks on 13 August, has been constructed within a large 1930s-built block at the Heatherwood Hospital on the outskirts of Ascot, and will be used for a wide range of orthopaedic procedures. The sixth permanent theatre at the 230-bed district hospital, the new orthopaedic unit is also the third such facility MTX Contracts has built on the site. The Stockport-based contractor extended the hospital’s existing theatre block to provide the site’s first orthopaedic theatre in 1997, and, a year later, undertook a similar conversion to the latest project, of another X-ray area, to form the hospital’s second such surgical facility. With demand for orthopaedic surgery rising year-on-year, head of estates and capital projects at the Heatherwood and Wexham Park Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Anthony Downey explained that, around 18 months ago, the Trust’s board reviewed a range of potential options for supplementing existing theatre capacity. One of the key criteria was that, with the lease for a temporary orthopaedic theatre sited in one of the hospital’s car parks due to expire this September, additional theatre capacity needed to be provided extremely quickly. “Normally when looking to build a new theatre unit of this type an estates department would enter a competitive tender process but, with the need to really fast-track this project through, I recommended to the board a single tender action,” he explains. “This meant producing a detailed presentation to substantiate the argument both for a single tender and for the chosen contractor, while Estates Design and Technical Services (which is part of Berkshire Shared Services, hosted by Berkshire Healthcare NHS Trust, and was also the contract administrator)) appointed an outside quantity surveyor and cost consultant, Osbornes, to undertake a full value-for-money analysis, and ensure that the price paid would not exceed what we might have been able to achieve via competitive tender.

Excellent track record