Building NHS Nightingale

Editor, NLQ and New London Weekly

David Taylor interviews James Hepburn, Principal, Building Engineering Services, BDP and Paul Johnson, Architect Director, BDP about their role in building the NHS Nightingale Hospital in London at the Excel Centre to care for patients suffering with Covid-19.

David Taylor: What have you been doing?

James Hepburn and Paul Johnson, BDP: We have been acting as lead consultant on the design side, coordinating the developing design working under main contractor CFES who have been superb. There is a strong collaborative approach by everyone involved in the project which includes clinicians, consultants, contractors, the ExCel FM team and the British Army.

For the past two weeks, we have been working together to deliver the first phase of 500 ICU beds that can treat seriously ill COVID-19 patients and ensure they can be cared for by dedicated staff in full PPE equipment. The programme then rolls on to deliver 3,000 more beds over the next few weeks.

James Hepburn, Principal, BDP

How did it come about?

The call for assistance arrived on Sunday 22ndMarch due to a study BDP had undertaken the previous week proposing the use of exhibitions centres for large scale temporary ICU facilities.

What does the job entail?

The bed heads and service corridors have been constructed from a component system that is usually used to construct exhibition stands. It’s quick to construct and lightweight. There has been some simple reinforcement to allow services to be fitted to the walls.

The ExCel Centre’s existing electrical infrastructure has been modified to increase the resilience, UPS and temporary generators. The temporary electrics used for exhibitions has been used to feed a 3m section of bed head dado trunking that has been prefabricated by electrician’s on site.

The medical gas installation is huge, two distribution ring mains run around the basement car park at high level, rising up to feed each bed head through the services floor boxes and then distribute to the bed head via the service corridor between the bed heads.

How has it been?

It has been a very intensive, exhausting first 2 weeks consisting of long days and tight project milestones, but our whole team are immensely proud to be able to play their part in this project. We have the privilege of being involved in this monumental team effort where everybody is pulling the same direction to deliver this immensely important healthcare facility.

Are there any lessons from your previous schemes you have brought?

We have been drawing on our previous experience of designing large scale healthcare facilities including very large ICUs in super speciality tertiary hospitals like QE Hospital, Birmingham.

And what have you learned?

To be able to build the facility safely and at speed requires a clarity of conceptual thinking and planning with a rigorous approach to procurement and construction. The intention is to share these key principles and lessons with those delivering similar emergency healthcare projects over the next few weeks.

We found that solutions have to be flexible, rapid to construct and take into account procurement channels to be able to deliver this volume of equipped beds within such a short timeframe. It also relies on teams making immediate decisions to allow construction to progress in parallel with design.

Minimal building intervention is also essential to ensure rapid project delivery, so it is vital that building assets are used to the maximum. Also, the experience of the healthcare architecture team and their understanding of clinical flows allowed logical repurposing spaces with minimal new construction.

Paul Johnson, Director, BDP