NHS Nightingale Hospital Exeter - Stride Treglown
Project Details
Project - NHS Nightingale Hospital Exeter
Sector - Health
Technology - Component
Company - Stride Treglown
Project Overview
A complex brief In terms of scope, scale and complexity, NHS Nightingale Hospital Exeter differed to the other pandemic field hospitals. The ambition was to deliver something more than a temporary facility. Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Foundation Trust required a fully functional, permanent clinical facility. Added to this, large sites with good existing infrastructure (conference venues) were not available across the South West.
So a redundant retail shed was selected as the preferred option. Our unique solution The speed of construction, site restrictions and availability of materials required innovative procurement of modular assemblies and off-site components. All new infrastructure was brought to the site and the shed was more than doubled in footprint through 60 MMC volumetric units. As the last of the eight UK Nightingale Hospitals to be built, we applied lessons learned from the emerging COVID-19 response to deliver an innovative and flexible facility.
Our model consisted of five wards each with 24 beds. The segregated wards enable the hospital to care for the greatest range of patients - from the sickest through to those recovering or with less severe problems. Diagnostic imaging, to allow for cancer screening, was also included in the scheme to provide greater flexibility. Flexibility in use NHS Nightingale Hospital Exeter was put into operation in June 2020, initially taking non-COVID patients to relieve the pressure on regional hospitals. It received its first COVID-19 patients in November 2020. Our innovative ward design meant that this facility was one of only two in the country to continually receive COVID-19 patients.
After a reduction in cases, the hospital was used for cancer screening. Phase Two – Recovering Post- Covid Waiting Lists In 2021, the team was approached to transform the facility into a full planned care centre to help clear the backlog of clinical demand created by the pandemic. The objective was to make best use of the existing space created for the Nightingale Hospital for elective recovery by creating:
-Orthopaedic short stay theatres
-Diagnostic hub with CT/MRI capacity (one of the first in Devon)
-Rheumatology unit -Ophthalmology facilities
The unique existing hospital design enabled the team to adapt the main bed spaces (60 volumetric units) into the various clinics and treatment rooms required for the new community hub. To provide the facilities for Orthopaedic Surgery in a short timeframe, the design team radically sought to procure the high-tech spaces using offsite manufacture. Two Operating Theatres, a recovery space was transported to site and craned onto a prefabricated steel support deck in the carpark and linked to the main building.
