.png)
NHS England’s first Nightingale hospital opened at the London ExCel conference centre last week. Others are coming on stream in Manchester, Birmingham and Bristol, as well as in Glasgow and Cardiff.
BAM Construction and its supply team will turn the halls of Harrogate Convention Centre for the Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust. It will have capacity for 500 beds.
Lead architect is BDP, which has worked on the emergency facility at the Excel Centre, while Silcock Leedham will provide services engineering, with Arcadis providing project management and quantity surveying services.
The team is converting eight halls to create suitable partitions, flooring, and specialist mechanical & electrical zones. The team is working 24/7 in shift patterns with medical staff and the army.
BAM expects to have the hospital available for use by next weekend. All construction will have taken no longer than 14 days. Following the completion of works, BAM’s facilities management business will help to maintain the facility to provide support and continuity.
BAM is also close to being engaged on two further emergency Nightingale hospitals, it said.
Paul Cleminson, pre-construction director for BAM Construction in the northeast, said: “We have mobilised immediately with a team which is working 24 hours in shifts around the clock, following government guidance about safe working and delivering these emergency facilities to assist the effort to support our NHS. We’re very proud to be involved.
“I’m delighted to say we have first rate partners, and that our extensive and recent experience of healthcare projects in the north of England will serve us well, having worked several times with Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust over the years.”
Having acquired several UK construction companies over the years, including Higgs & Hill and Kyle Stewart, the Dutch construction giant considers itself to have British blood in its heritage. “Over our distinguished history of service to the UK, BAM has probably built more healthcare schemes than anybody: in excess of 400,” Paul Cleminson said. “We even built emergency hospitals during both world wars. So we feel a sense of poignancy to be doing this now.”
Elsewhere BAM teams are on site at Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust and University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust providing the NHS with critical construction works for new and upgraded facilities.
At Worcester BAM is refurbishing a ward – the last phase of 23 beds is due to complete in May. At Southampton it is putting a new 22-bed general intensive care unit, which is due to complete in September.
Got a story? Email news@theconstructionindex.co.uk
