Ormskirk District General Hospital, Liverpool

As with the previous project at the hospital, the works were undertaken in busy hospital grounds, presenting added challenges with traffic management within an already busy car park.

Additionally, there were residential properties in close proximity to our work area, creating additional needs for liaison and coordination of the works to minimise disruption.

Being a refurbishment, this works also required more co-ordination with operational and clinical staff to ensure that our activities did not interfere with patient care and the hospital’s other operations.

Using the lessons learnt from the previous project at the hospital, as well as from other similar live site schemes, we devised a methodology that overcame these challenges.

To minimise disruption to the hospital’s operations, we worked closely with the hospital’s staff, undertaking weekly lookahead programming to better co-ordinate our works with hospital activities. Additionally, daily co-ordination meetings helped to ensure we programmed and planned work around patient care.

Additionally, a revised version of the proven traffic management plan was used, accounting for the different site location within the hospital grounds and other differences between the projects. This prevented interface between site traffic and those using the hospital, as well as minimising noise and other disruption for nearby residents.

The project provides us with valuable lessons learnt that will support our successful delivery of the Elite House project, including:

• Maintaining the same team across projects provides better collaboration.
• Weekly lookahead programming with key stakeholders helps to minimise disruption and builds goodwill with these groups.
• Using local supply chain provides better value and smoother delivery.