Lindum carried out the refurbishment and redecoration of the Angiography department at Queen’s Medical Centre for Nottingham University Hospitals Trust.

The project involved stripping out the existing services and preparing for the installation of new hi-tech medical equipment.

The work also included removal of asbestos materials and a full redecoration, which all took place in a live medical environment, which meant that good communication was key to its success.

Lindum was approached to carry out the work after successfully completing two previous projects at the hospital. The Angiography department is in the centre of the QMC building and therefore a strict and robust plan had to be devised to ensure the hospital could remain fully operational throughout the whole project.

A services yard was given to the project team to store materials and plant equipment. To minimise the impact of delivering materials, we booked time slots in which to use the lift. This provided clear separation between construction and health activities.

We installed melamine screens and temporary extract ventilation, which were regularly inspected by the infection control team to make sure that positive pressure was being maintained in our workspace. This ensured dust did not escape from our work area into the ward environment. The HEPA filter in the temporary system was changed on a daily basis to ensure perfect performance.

Because the project team used on this scheme had over 20 years’ of medical sector experience between them, they were able to assist and make changes to designs to assist in benefitting the client.

Our team suggested forming temporary doors and entrances into service voids for our workforce to use. The benefit being that we could provide clear separation between construction and medical areas. The client was surprised by this suggestion, as no other contractor had proposed it in the 40 years the building had been in existence. The solution has worked so well, that the client is reviewing other contracts to see if they would benefit from this approach

The need to minimise disruption dictated that our work would be done in two phases. The first was our construction works, the second the installation of specialist equipment once the space was certified as ‘medically clean.’ The estates management team noted that they often had issues with equipment installation as sometimes the building work that had been done was not right for the equipment. To solve this issue, we opened communication lines with ‘Phillips’, the approved company for installing all specialist equipment. We ensured their work could be carried out whilst we were applying the finishing touches to our element of the work.