Our (flatpack) hospital...

Monday 02 March 2020

'Flatpack' methods of building the future hospital are being examined by Jersey’s government as a way of speeding up the process, and getting around problems caused by the island’s “limited” number of construction workers, Express has learned.

According to the government, the development of Jersey’s new key health centre is expected to have, “...substantial labour market implications given the scale of development taking place in a small island with a limited labour market of construction workers."

The government is therefore urging the future developer to consider “alternative construction techniques”, including pre-fabrication and modular construction. 

The advice was laid out in new planning guidance – a draft document explaining what issues will need to be overcome by the developer of the future hospital – which was published and put out for public consultation last month.

Pictured: The Planning Guidance document.

Sometimes known as ‘flatpack construction’, the modular method is becoming increasingly popular around the world as a way of surmounting productivity and quality issues within the sector. 

The method was recently employed in the Chinese province of Wuhan, where a quarantine hospital for coronavirus patients was completed in just nine days.

Explaining the process and advantages of the method, Jersey health officials told Express: “Modular construction’ is a term used to describe the use of factory-produced pre-engineered building units that are delivered to site and assembled as large volumetric components or as substantial elements of a building. The modular units may form complete rooms, parts of rooms, or separate highly serviced units such as toilets or lifts.

They continued: “The use of modular construction for health sector buildings is significant as it requires highly complex services and medical installations that can be commissioned and tested off-site: this can deliver advantages of speed of construction and reduce on-site disturbance and disruption.”

The eventual designer of the future hospital is also being asked to conjure “innovative” ways of housing those working on what will be Jersey’s largest ever capital project.

Video: Modular and pre-fab construction methods were used to create a hospital in China to deal with the growing number of coronavirus patients. (CGTN/YouTube)

Asked about what form these “solutions” might take, a spokesperson told Express: “It is not for the Minister to set out what solutions might be sought to deal with the accommodation of temporary workers: the planning guidance just seeks to provide the applicant with a degree of flexibility to explore and come forward with different solutions to this particular issue, should they need to do so.”

Beyond setting out mere construction methods, the planning guidance also exposes hopes for the new hospital to become a leading research and development centre for medical tech.

“Hospitals require complex data processing in order to manage patient experience and the provision of services.  This can include additional research capabilities. The opportunity is for the Hospital to be established in such a way that it meets its own requirements as well as providing access (for example to students, researchers or – with appropriate controls – commercial partners) to technologies or secure data environments not found elsewhere on the island,” the spokesperson explained.

The news comes as the process of selecting a design partner of the future hospital enters its final stages.

Express revealed in January that senior health officials had visited Stockholm, Madrid and the UK to look at examples of work from the three finalists.

A request made under the Freedom of Information Law published last week showed the cost of that trip was £14,000.