Redevelopment ‘challenged conventional wisdom’

In a paper awarded ‘Best Member Paper’ at the 2016 Institute of Hospital Engineering, Australia (IHEA) National Conference held at the Adelaide Oval last October, Mark Hooper BEng, executive project manager at Echuca Regional Health in Victoria, Australia, describes a A$66 million redevelopment project at the hospital – which is located in the historic port town of Echuca on the Murray river, two and a half hours north of Melbourne. He highlights some of the significant innovation that went into the project, in areas including plant operation and maintenance, emergency planning, resilience, and patient and staff comfort.

In late 2015 Echuca Regional Health completed the last stage of a A$66 million hospital redevelopment. The final product was designed to challenge conventional wisdom and produce a patient-focused solution that would announce itself as a flexible, intuitive, and calming place to support everyone to be healthy and live well. Drawing from the same character traits of the mighty Murray river, the new hospital is a positive statement that as a community we can continue to adapt and overcome challenges as they present. The ‘old hospital’ was delivering emergency department services out of a building that was 129 years old, with its newest ward building built in the 1960s. The hospital had just three private en-suite rooms for 80 inpatient beds, so redevelopment was well and truly overdue. The hospital engineer had worked at the site for over 10 years, and understood well the challenges of public hospitals. A 10-year services plan had been put in place to lever opportunity when it was time for the inevitable redevelopment. Strategic asset replacement, energy efficiency improvements, and bench testing of new technologies, were undertaken to inform a site-wide design strategy. This strategy became the keystone of the engineering design that was taken from masterplanning through to schematic design, design development, and construction. Post-occupancy evaluation is currently underway.

Patient-focused and staff-friendly