With only 100 days to go before the keys of the new Romford hospital are handed over to Barking, Havering and Redbridge NHS Trust, the PFI project team, and their consortium partner Catalyst, are undertaking the final preparations for making the new site operational.

The trust hosted a visit of FHN members and described the design principles that were established early on for the new hospital, the clinical involvement in the project, and commissioning plans for the site. Colleagues from Catalyst explained how they are building the hospital to meet trust requirements. FHN members were taken on a tour around the impressive new site.

Presentations
David Barber (Catalyst Healthcare Management Ltd) gave an overview of the new Romford hospital project - a 939 acute general hospital, with 20% single rooms, which includes a large cancer centre and a critical care centre. The hospital consortium partners are Catalyst, Sodexo, Siemens and BLL FM, with architects Jonathan Bailey and BDP.

Fiona Stokes (Clinical Commissioning Manager) explained the design principles, which included the separation of emergency and elective patient flows, dignity/privacy to be respected, and the hospital to have a hotel feel. Fiona described the clinical adjacencies and design process, which involved 64 working groups. The hospital includes 2 internal navigation routes, one close to the centre (a 'north circular' route), as well as a route closer to the perimeter (an 'M25' route).

David Rickard (Equipment Project Manager) described the medical equipment procurement, and the differences between the managed equipment service being included and excluded from the PFI contract. The subject of vendor independence, the benefits and disadvantages, were discussed. David emphasised the importance of the asset register being accurate, and the effects of the variation process.

Damon Cutler and Mark Buckle (Bovis Lend Lease) described the construction of the new hospital. Close attention was paid to the trust's design principles, and the completed building is almost identical to the architects' impression of the new hospital. Mock-ups enabled clinicians to test out whether the design would work in practice, eg the creation of a 30 bed ward, to see whether a bed could be pushed around, and whether wheelchair users would have good access. The main challenge has been the completion and validation of 4500 rooms, which has been achieved successfully by starting the process in good time, in September 2005, and also engaging the independent assessor at an early stage.

Lyn Farr (Associate Director new hospital) described the commissioning of the hospital. This new phase was launched in December 2004, marking the move out of the design stage. Priorities for this period have included the setting up of 56 commissioning working groups, developing a sequence of move plans, managing patient move plans (a patient move manual describes how this will take place), and sorting any remaining issues and concerns.

Presentations
Project overview: David Barber, Catalyst Healthcare - pdf, 1080kb
Managed equipment service: David Rickard, Barking, Havering and Redbridge Hospitals NHS Trust - pdf, 427kb
Design principles: Fiona Stokes, Barking, Havering and Redbridge Hospitals NHS Trust - pdf, 2894kb
Commissioning the hospital: Lyn Farr, Barking, Havering and Redbridge Hospitals NHS Trust - pdf, 52kb