South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust has appointed the GRAHAMBAM Healthcare Partnership, a joint venture between GRAHAM Construction and BAM, to deliver Ulster Hospital’s new £95 million Acute Services Block – currently Ireland’s largest live healthcare project.
The Acute Services Block is part of the Trust’s wider redevelopment plan for the Belfast hospital; it will replace the ‘outdated’ existing main ward block and other specialist acute services within the wider hospital estate. This building will sit adjacent to a new £86 million ward facility presently being constructed by GRAHAM-BAM Healthcare Partnership on the same complex, scheduled to complete this autumn.
The GRAHAM-BAM Healthcare Partnership was appointed to the fouryear, £185 m construction framework in 2013, and has now been appointed as main contractor to deliver the second facility – an eight-storey, 31,000 m2 Acute Services Block, incorporating specialist wards, support services, an assessment unit, inpatient imaging department, and a new emergency department with the capacity for 110,000 attendances per year.
The scheme has been designed to achieve BREEAM ‘Excellent’, and will use flat slab construction to integrate the structure with its services and the clinical spaces. The building’s high thermal mass will reduce operational running costs, while the delivery of the structural and acoustic solutions ‘will further support the healthcare services’.
Image courtesy of Avanti Architects/Kennedy Fitzgerald Architects.
