Forum 17 Key Takeaways

At Forum 17, we explored future-proofing healthcare estates: retrofit strategies for success.

The event in summary;

The Forum was held at the MTC headquarters in Coventry. The day was structured around presentations and panel discussions that provided an in-depth exploration into how estates and building retrofit/refurb strategies are shaping the future of healthcare construction.

We had the pleasure of welcoming healthcare professionals and experts from key organizations such as Balfour Beatty, HLM Architects, Gleeds, Stride Treglown, TODD Architects, Kier Construction and many more.

Building stronger retrofit foundations;

Steve Nesbitt (MTC) kicked off the day with a brief review of the government commitment to achieving Net Zero Carbon by 2040, where he went on to state how there are approx. 33 million buildings that are not compliant with Net Zero Carbon within the UK alone. He went on to express that there is a high demand for retrofit within the market with a staggering £60-£80bn potential addressable market within healthcare and yet we are only currently delivering approx. £6bn per annum.

Conversations went on to discuss how the fear of the unknown is still very present within the industry, leading to uncertainty and doubt. Digitalisation is considered key to ensuring we have control and predictability in retrofit projects and yet currently there is a lack of high-integrity digital information.

To overcome these drawbacks, it is vital that we work alongside the Construction Innovation Hub and others to further develop lessons learned. We should no longer be looking at how we used to do things and current processes, but should be focusing on what we can or could be doing differently. Feedback sharing across projects is key to building stronger and more efficient processes as well as relationships amongst stakeholder groups.

Healthcare Sandpits in motion;

Tom Yates (Balfour Beatty) carried on the presentations of the day, where he explored healthcare sandpits and explained how these are used as prototypes/mockups of healthcare buildings, providing a safe place to streamline processes and check what does and doesn’t work before introducing products to the market.

The Healthcare Sandpits are focused on reconfigurability and interior strategy from the Product Platform Rulebook and are considered as key to designing adaptable spaces and developing new approaches to design and build. Through the creation of the sandpits, suppliers and manufacturers can install their products, allowing them to easily identify challenges with installation and investigate how they can address these challenges.

Tom went on to highlight the importance of standardization and how standardising components is key to adaptability and a game changer within the market. Within retrofit, there is a need for working around general operations of healthcare facilities. Therefore, design focus should be on adapting spaces without negatively impacting the environment/other areas. Refurb projects require holistic thinking to ensure impact is minimised on the larger estate.

Overcoming challenges;

Mel Jacobsen-Cox delved into backlog maintenance and how this spans a range of requirements from complete overhauls, interior refresh through to compliance upgrades and single room conversions. She expressed the importance of consistency across all phases of the project and the need for a holistic view of refurb as a bigger picture.

The presentation went onto explore 2 case studies around the Prince Charles hospital (case study 1) and Glangwili and Withybush hospitals (case study 2) which identified challenges that needed to be addressed. This resulted in the initial 2 week design process moving into a 6 week in depth consultancy process. This enabled better communication amongst the teams and more effective planning, resulting in more concise processes and improved productivity.

To be able to successfully deliver projects that meet client needs, we need concise information and to look at where provision can be moved into community spaces. Retrofit opportunities are seen as one of the key ways to improve environments for both patients and staff alike.

Panel overview;

The day ended with the panel of speakers providing an overview of the day. It is vital to integrate platforms and processes where we can. Not only do we need a planning approach, but we also need a platform approach to design and build.

It’s time to recognise that one size does not fit all. Attaining necessary views and opinions through sector integration is key. We need to work together and to trust another, to be able to bring this industry forward. Finding better ways to score and measure the current conditions of healthcare estates, will allow us to provide the correct tools to address in-balances and come up with solutions.

Emma Whigham (NHP) stated how we should be using Hospital 2.0 as the foundation for planning and designing future healthcare facilities and how we should be looking at how we can use this to create a value toolkit and playbook that can be used for all healthcare design. This can ultimately flow through into HBN’s and can be used to bridge the gap between design construction and meeting healthcare demands.

In summary;

Refurb has a direct impact on healthcare spaces and is critical to the NHS. Early-stage planning and surveying is critical to successful delivery. Early-stage development of mock ups gives us the ability to try innovations, fail and learn lessons without impacting project delivery.

We need to welcome expertise from outside our sector to enhance innovation and solutions to ensure that Clinical & Estates strategies marry up. Clinicians need to be the main contact for the generic design of hospitals. Critical feedback from stakeholder groups is necessary for best practice to be aggregated to ensure we learn lessons going forward.

There is a need for the creation of standardized repeatable parts for retrofit. Standardization streamlines processes across the board and can be seen as giving us better capital. Digital technologies should be automated where possible and guidelines should be simplified to create a single focal point for everyone to follow.

We look forward to future events. Keep a look out on our page for further updates.