The building’s external shell was installed by the construction and engineering company in late September on a prepared site on a car park, with fitting out of FFE and MEP elements of the operating theatre project now under way.
The new single-storey unit includes a theatre suite with recovery rooms, reception and waiting areas, office space, and a dedicated staff facility. A plant equipment enclosure located on top will contain air-handling units and electrical supply panels to serve the self-contained 420 m² building.
MTX – which is working on the project with Simply Serve, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Yeovil Hospital which provides a broad range of services to the hospital and other organisations, including management of capital projects, said: “Modern Methods of Construction are increasingly chosen by NHS Trusts to provide additional facilities in shorter timescales, with the proven advantages of faster completion, cost savings, and a greener build, with less waste and a reduced carbon footprint.”
Yeovil Hospital and Somerset NHS Foundation Trust, CEO, Matthew Bryant said: “The theatre currently being built on the site at Yeovil Hospital using Modern Methods of Construction will be fundamental in reducing the wait time for patients needing procedures in five specialties – breast, general surgery, dermatology, ENT & trauma, and orthopaedics – and who can go home the same day. The pace at which MMC builds go up enables us to make significant strides in increasing the hospital’s footprint to meet the ever-growing needs of the communities we care for.”
MTX has extensive experience working in busy locations within hospital sites, and says its staff are ‘skilled in optimising progress, while minimising impact on existing clinical services and patients’. The car park at Yeovil District Hospital includes an access route used by ambulances, so specific measures have had to be put in place to manage site movements.
The delivery of the external building shell, and the crane lift onto the foundations previously prepared by MTX, were timed to minimise impacting other vehicle movements, including by ambulances.
Yeovil Hospital and Somerset NHS Foundation Trust’s 2,200 staff provide care to people south Somerset, North and West Dorset, and parts of Mendip. Yeovil District Hospital has 345 beds, and provides a full range of clinical services – including general medicine, cardiology, general surgery, orthopaedic surgery, trauma, a maternity unit, and paediatrics.
Pictured is an architect’s visualisation of the new general surgery operating theatre at Yeovil District Hospital.