Shropshire Women and Children’s Centre

Client: The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust
Location: Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital
Discipline(s):

The £28m Shropshire Women and Children’s Centre at the Princess Royal Hospital is a two storey 2,851 square metre new build facility for the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust; the main provider of acute hospital services for the Shropshire, Telford & Wrekin and mid Wales regions.

The centre will cater for up to 135 inpatients comprising of children’s inpatients; children’s oncology and haematology; gynaecology inpatients; emergencies; procedures and Early Pregnancy Assessment Service (EPAS). The project also included a refurbishment of part of the adjoining existing building. We provided engineering services, including civil, structural and geo-environmental, to Balfour Beatty under the ProCure21+ framework. Our involvement included: Outline Business Case (OBC), building services design up to full business case and trust professional advisor. The structural team delivered services from OBC through to completion.

Structural solution
The centre of the building comprises of a steel frame with a composite metal deck and concrete slabs. One of the key challenges included dealing with the requirements for rigid and inflexible floor plates in sensitive areas such as the operating theatres.

Significant drainage diversion was required due to an existing sewer which went through the new footprint of the new building. Enabling works were undertaken for the creation of a 300 space car park in order to relocate cars from the existing space. The project was undertaken in a live hospital environment and included works on the existing helipad which was relocated.

Building services solution
A new High Voltage (HV) substation and generator were included to address some of the weak infrastructure. Heat delivery was linked to the district heating system and modifications were made to the existing Combined Heat and Power (CHP) unit. A new exchanger was incorporated to cover a distance of 200 metres from the energy centre to the new build.

Building Information Modelling (BIM)
This was a ProCure21+ exemplar BIM project, and one which the Government was interested in monitoring. Our design team conducted presentations to the Department of Health to demonstrate how the project was approached using BIM with results including zero clashes.