Today, at a summit in central London celebrating the achievements of the winners of The Prime Minister’s Better Public Building Awards, Executive Vice President Paul Chandler joins Kieran McDaid, Director of Capital Investment at UCL Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, and Patrick Nee, Partner at Hopkins Architects, as the keynote speakers.
The team will be talking about the UCH Macmillan Cancer Centre, which opened its doors to patients in April 2012. Skanska was the main contractor on the project, for which John Birch, project director, won the Construction Manager of the Year award in November 2012.
The presentation will highlight how the team worked together – contractor, client and designer, as well as the supply chain – collaborating from an early stage to ensure flexibility in the programme and significant achievements in environmental performance. For example, the building, which is certified as BRE Environmental Assessment Method Excellent, exceeded energy conservation building regulations by 38 per cent and met the NHS environmental performance targets some eight years ahead of target, cutting carbon emissions by a third.
The presentation also describes how the team involved patients and clinicians in the design and planning process to help create a world-class facility that is the first of its kind in the UK.
When the building won the award, in November 2012, judges described the project as: “A building designed around the needs of patients and staff, focusing on treatment, wellbeing and rehabilitation in an imposing complex which has achieved outstanding environmental as well as clinical excellence.”
Macmillan Cancer Support has now reached the milestone of seeing 10,000 patients at the centre, and UCH has seen the number of patients it is able to treat each month rise from around 5,000 to 8,000.
Patients themselves have described their feelings about the centre:
“This is the most amazing place – building and staff. I am so impressed by the use of technology – even the scales are ‘whizzy’.”
“So bright and light!”
“What a difference to the old Rosenheim.”
“This is a wonderful building – optimistic and fearless.”
More information about the project is available in Upfront, the magazine from Skanska UK, accessible online here.