Members of IHEEM’s Welsh Branch recently toured the Ysbyty Ystrad Fawr in Caerphilly – set, on its completion this month, to be one of Wales’ first two hospitals to feature single-bed en suite rooms, and the largest new hospital currently under construction in the Principality.
(Wales’only other 100 % single-bed hospital completed to date is the Aneurin Bevan Hospital in Ebbw Vale, officially opened last December). Before the tour, Simon Davies, associate capital project director of the Aneurin Bevan Health Board, and Gareth Williams, associate director, Building Engineering, Arup, gave a presentation on the hospital’s key engineering and design features. The hospital is at the heart of plans by Aneurin Bevan Health Board, Caerphilly Teaching Local Health Board (TLHB), and Caerphilly County Borough Council (CCBC), to improve health and social care locally, and deliver the aims and objectives of the Welsh Assembly’s agenda set out in “Designed for Life: Creating world class health services for Wales”. Ysbyty Ystrad Fawr will be a 269-bed local general hospital arranged over four levels. The main concourse is one floor above ground, enabling car parking to be located under the main building. The hospital has been procured under the “Designed for life” framework, and delivered by the BAM supply chain, with engineering design by Arup, architectural design by Nightingale Associates, and mechanical, electrical, and plant installation, by Lorne Stewart. Key features include “100% single bedrooms”; sprinkler protection throughout; a design that meets and exceeds Part L 2006 carbon emission strategies and will enable achievement of a NEAT “Excellent” rating; windows designed to achieve balance between thermal performance and daylighting while improving natural ventilation, and a biomass boiler. The hospital’s construction on a flood plain required significant modelling work to identify a solution that would prevent flooding without impacting on the flood risk to surrounding properties
