Prototyping the future: Single bedroom design

With over 25 years’ experience in construction design and delivery, both in the private sector and within the NHS, Stuart has been closely involved in shaping H2.0. Here, he explains how his background informs his role, why single bedrooms are at the heart of the new hospital model, and how building and testing a prototype is solving problems now rather than on live construction sites.

Stuart, can you start by telling us about your role in the New Hospital Programme?

My current role is Integration Lead in Technical Services, and I’ve been involved in the programme for just over three years. I came in with a lot of design experience. My background is construction design delivery — I started out as an electrician, and I’ve been a Building Design manager for 25 years, mostly working in the construction sector.

During the pandemic I spent a year working for Guy’s and St Thomas’ as their Capital Delivery director on the NHS side, which was a really good experience and a very focused piece of work. After that I went back to the construction sector and then joined the NHP in June 2022. Since then, I’ve been bringing my experience into the design process, going wherever the need was greatest. I’ve settled into this role as Integration Lead, which is great because I sit across many different directorates making sure we’re all coordinated.

What directorates do you spend most time coordinating?

My greatest focus is between the clinical team — the transformation team — and the delivery team. With design, we must take a lot of information and coordinate closely with the clinical experts, because we need to deliver what they know will be required to optimise treatment of patients.

We also must make sure that it’s deliverable. The delivery team are really focused on efficiency — using industrialisation construction. The government’s Construction Playbook set out how we need to build more efficiently, and we’ve taken those principles and turned them into a method of delivery that has created the H2.0 system.

What’s different about the way NHP is approaching hospital delivery compared to the past?

Traditionally, hospital projects were very linear. You’d start with a clinical design, then you’d try to match that with the budget, then you’d go back and forth until the client signed off. Only then would you try and work out how to actually build it.

Because every hospital was unique — with its own specific briefing requirements — there were no two hospitals the same. That meant the construction response was always bespoke. Structure, services, engineering — everything had to be adapted each time.

What’s unique about this programme is that we’re bringing all those elements together earlier, at a truly collaborative level. The building must deliver clinically and be best in class for patients, but now we can weave in construction efficiencies and commercial efficiencies much sooner.

That makes the outcome more straightforward to build, more repeatable, and less risky. Repeatability reduces risk, and that’s critical in construction. The risk profile of hospitals is so high that only a handful of contractors are willing to take them on. What we’re trying to do is change that, by creating a delivery model that contractors want to be part of.

We’re using the same ‘kit of parts’ across projects. We can adjust and change things, but the building blocks are the same. That increases repeatability, efficiency, and reduces risk. In construction, we work on small margins, so if a project is too risky, contractors just won’t touch it. By standardising the approach and reducing risk, we’re opening the door to more contractors engaging with these large hospital projects.

Let’s talk about the single-bedroom prototype. Why was this chosen as the first space to develop and test?

The reason we focused on a single bedroom is that it’s the most repeatable room in any hospital. The brief is clear: 100% single bedrooms. We’re not doing multi-bed wards anymore. Every patient will have their own room, their own space for privacy and dignity, for better infection prevention and control, and for patient care.

The benefits are massive. Outcomes improve when people are in their own bedrooms. So, 100% single bedrooms was the drive. In a standard district general hospital of around 400—500 beds, you’re looking at around 3,500 single rooms across the first wave of hospitals alone. If we can get this room right now and 
test it thoroughly in a prototype before construction 
starts, it’s massively important. We’re delivering multiple projects in parallel, so this is our one chance to learn those lessons in a safe environment before the hospitals are built.

What exactly are you testing through the prototype?

Initially, it was a low-fidelity prototype to test industrialised elements. We wanted to see how mechanical and electrical services could be standardised and manufactured off-site — things like the bedhead services, the doors, and especially the corridor-to-bedroom-to-bathroom interface, which is a classic problem area in hospitals.

Where different services interface with each other, or different parts of the building meet, is where problems usually arise. If we can solve those now and provide a repeatable solution, it reduces risk and means contractors can deliver efficiently. But this prototype evolved beyond just technical testing — working with Reds10, we realised we could take it up to a much higher level of fidelity. Rather than just rough walls and no ceiling, we built a more complete space. That allowed us to bring in multiple disciplines — clinical, estates, digital, patient representatives — to test workflows, technology, and patient experience.

It also makes construction safer. By having a controlled, mock-up environment to understand exactly how the room will come together we can solve problems early which is obviously much better than doing so on a live site, where mistakes can be costly and dangerous.

What’s the biggest benefit of prototyping at this stage?

The biggest benefit is confidence. Once we get the interfaces and industrialised elements right, we can give contractors a proven solution and say, ‘Do it like this – we know it works’. That allows them to deliver at scale and with fewer risks. It makes it safer for those working on the hospitals as well because fewer problems on a live site makes it a safer one, with fewer accidents. This is so important and supports the safety case required by the Building Safety Regulator. Health and Safety Executive (HSE) — the UK’s national regulator for workplace health, safety and welfare — statistics show that 51 people per year are killed on site in the construction industry.¹

Based on the working hours projected for the NHP that would mean we could anticipate three deaths on our first wave of sites. This is simply unacceptable, and we must work with the industry to change it. Modularisation of products and systems has been proven to reduce the likelihood of serious incidents, and for that reason we need to advance it, making construction safer and therefore a sector where people want to build long and rewarding careers. This would also further support Building Safety Regulator’s drive toward all a wider audit of all construction products.

Finally, what does the prototype tell you about the future of hospital construction?

It tells us that building hospitals in a programmatic, repeatable way is possible. You can balance clinical outcomes, construction efficiency, and operational flexibility. You can industrialise where it makes sense, standardise the complex interfaces, and reduce risk.

Crucially, you can do all of that before construction starts. That’s what makes this programme different. It’s exciting, and it gives me real confidence that the first wave of H2.0 hospitals will deliver what patients and staff need — efficiently, safely, and at scale.

References

1 HSE. (2025). Work-related fatal injuries in Great Britain. https://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/fatals-overview.htm.