The Royal Hospital For Children, Glasgow

We started our journey on the project in 2009 working alongside principal contractor Brookfield Multiplex for NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde. The new hospital is physically linked to the refurbished maternity unit and the new adult hospital in order to provide the best possible care for babies, children, young people and their families.  The overall site is equivalent in size to 11 football pitches making it one of the biggest NHS construction projects in the country. It is also one of the largest reinforced concrete frames ever built in Europe, allowing for an in-built fire protection, improved acoustic performance for enhanced patient experience, better ability to resist vibration and increased thermal mass for reduced energy consumption.

This outstanding hospital was designed around the needs of children, with key insight from the young patients themselves as well as architects, nurses, doctors and other clinical staff. The children’s hospital provides a comfortable single-room environment for increased privacy and reduced infection rates and enabling parents to stay at their child’s bedside overnight. The hospital is a fun and vibrant space designed in collaboration with the Glasgow Science Museum. Flooded with natural light and decorated with soft colourful furnishings and interactive technology, the non-institutional design helps to distract children by positively impacting their senses and providing them indoor and outdoor play areas and a cinema. It is surrounded by parkland, offering them a place of sanctuary and well-being.

Efficiency and sustainability were high on the hospital’s list of priorities and our designers fully embraced this aspect of the brief, contributing to an award-winning environmental strategy, which included aiming for BREEAM Excellent.  The design of the building has been optimized and uses a high quality, air-tight cladding system to ensure a draught free environment, lower energy costs and improved internal air quality control.

Minimizing and managing waste generation was an essential aspect of the construction phase. Early in the project we provided waste management licensing and exemption registration support to the client by demonstrating to the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) that a full site waste management license would not be required for the proposed on-site waste sorting facility. This subsequently enabled a range of environmental, economic and operational benefits including a 96% diversion of construction waste from landfill, reduced traffic movements, increased quality and value of recyclable materials and two out of the three BREEAM credits initially targeted by Brookfield Multiplex.

Throughout construction we monitored the operation and performance of the sorting facility against compliance with the exemptions registered and applicable waste regulations. We also audited the development’s progressive BREEAM performance against the waste related credits targeted by Brookfield Multiplex.

In addition we worked with the construction team to maximise the amount of off-site fabrication, such as pre-cast columns, edge beams and stairs, which assisted in further waste reduction.