Patients and visitors
Key to the future - Handover day for Yorkshire’s new state-of-the-art cancer centre at St James’s University Hospital
12th Dec 2007
On time and on budget, the newly completed Bexley Wing - home to one of the country’s largest cancer centres, the St James’s Institute of Oncology - is being handed over today (Friday 14 December) to the Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust. Phil Parnell, project director for the main contractor, Bovis Lend Lease, will mark the occasion by presenting a symbolic key of the door to Professor Hugo Mascie-Taylor, the Trust’s Medical Director.
Costing £220 million to build and equip, this is an important new asset for the people of
High-tech treatment equipment includes ten linear accelerators, four computerised tomography (CT) simulators, three CT scanners, two magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners and a nuclear medicine department equipped with five gamma cameras.
On the wards, patients’ beds are equipped with multi-task bed head units featuring a single lighting fixture that does the work of the three light fittings usually found in hospitals - saving energy as well as installation and maintenance costs.
For visitors and staff a 1,284-space eight-storey car park has been built, linked to the main building by a covered walkway. There is a large, naturally-lit entrance foyer to the new wing and two landscaped courtyards.
Chairman of Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, Martin Buckley, said today: “This is a red-letter day for the people of Leeds, and
“Cancer services here in
“Our next challenge is to ensure a seamless transfer of services from manya number of different sites into the new building over the weeks and months ahead. I know those sStaff who are moving over to Bexley Wing are tremendously eager to be in place and using facilities which have been designed explicitly around their needswishes and those of patients.; the first of whom will be admitted We are also greatly looking forward to seeing the first patients in the new building later this month.”
Kerry Jackson, Leeds Teaching Hospitals' Project Director for the new building added: "As well as delivering huge improvements in the environment for patients, visitors and staff, this project will help transform the overall quality of care here in
Phil Parnell, of Bovis Lend Lease, paid tribute to the team spirit that helped the project to completion in little more than three years: “The government, the NHS trust, our client, Catalyst, our many contractors and suppliers and the several hundred people who worked on site all pulled together to make this happen,” he said.
“The construction programme was tough but there was a real can-do attitude among everyone involved and a genuine desire to see this vital new healthcare asset open on time. I congratulate everyone who has helped us to achieve that goal.”
Construction began on site in October 2004, under a 30-year Private Finance Initiative (PFI) contract awarded by the NHS Trust to Catalyst Healthcare, with its construction partner Bovis Lend Lease, managing the 38-month building programme, which has involved over 100 different contractors and suppliers.
Graham Johnson is Catalyst’s general manager for the Bexley Wing and he looks forward to seeing it go into service, with the first out patients scheduled for treatment before Christmas. “The design is the outcome of careful consultation with end-users - the consultants, doctors and nurses who will deliver the care and treatment to cancer patients.
“Lessons learned on our other hospitals have been incorporated at
Architects Anshen & Allen have made clever use of the sloping site the wing is built on - part of which was a former car park - to position three storeys below ground level. This significantly reduces the visual impact of the 12-storey building and provides an ultra-safe underground location for radiotherapy equipment such as linear accelerators which emit radiation in the course of use. To protect the public and hospital workers, these treatment chambers are constructed with high density concrete walls up to 2.4 metres thick.
Particular attention has been paid to the building’s carbon footprint and long-term running costs. Two absorption chillers capture waste steam from existing hospital boilers, turning it into chilled water for use in the new cooling and heating system. A process recycles waste exhaust air from the ventilation system and feeds it back into the hospital boilers as pre-heated water, and a series of heat exchangers recover waste heat from the hot water pipes.
To further reduce maintenance bills stainless steel drainage pipes are used throughout the Bexley Wing. These have a longer life-span and don’t present the same problems of disposal as PVC or cast iron pipes. Cabling is all insulated with polythene rather than PVC, again to overcome disposal problems. During construction a new ring main fuel oil system was installed to serve the entire hospital, old and new, doing away with the need for individual oil storage tanks and frequent top-ups from oil tankers.
Over the coming weeks, staff and departments will be moving into the new facility in a phased transfer of services. These include wards and departments from
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