Celebrating the work of our capital planning and estates teams
Services providing care to patients are at the heart of the NHS, but without the buildings to house them they would not be able to function.
That huge responsibility lies with the capital planning and estates teams who must balance routine and backlog maintenance with investment in the future.
It is why we are raising awareness of and celebrating their work throughout March and April, highlighting the largely unseen but crucial part they play.
“We’ve got over 100 different clinical services in approximately 250,000 square metres of sites,” said Mark Parsons, Assistant Director of Capital Planning for Swansea Bay University Health Board.
“If you went down to the Principality Stadium tomorrow that’s equivalent to 26.5 pitches, just to give you the scale of things.
“We’ve got an aging estate – 75% of our estate is over 30 years old. We’ve got significant backlog maintenance and through capital and estates we are managing that through maintenance programmes, which is regular maintenance or planned.
“We also deal with reactive maintenance and we’ve got the planned capital programmes to renew and refurbish our estate, and we have plans for new builds of various departments going forward, so plenty going on within capital planning.”
Recent and ongoing projects include but are not limited to:
Morriston Hospital
- Roof replacement. A third of the roof covering around six wards has been replaced over the last two years, with further work planned for more wards over the next two years.
- Ward refurbishment. More than 17 wards have had new flooring and ceilings installed for infection prevention and control and this work is ongoing. While this work was carried out medical gas and nurse call systems were also upgraded and estates carried out checks and maintenance they would be unable to do when the ward is occupied.
- The creation of new specialist cubicles for burns patients in a new intensive therapy unit (ITU), with a new burns theatre next door.
- A new electricity substation to meet the hospital’s increased power demand.
- Restoration of the main entrance area, which saw the removal of the Tawe ward built during Covid and new seating areas and lung function and blood test suites created.
- Fire alarm and fire door replacements.
A third of the roof covering around six wards at Morriston Hospital has been replaced over the last two years, with more work planned.
Credit: SBUHB
Singleton Hospital
- New cladding and windows fitted over six floors, with backlog maintenance carried out while wards were vacated for the work to take place. Work was also done on the roof.
- Refurbishment of main entrance area.
- Upgrading of hot and cold water systems in theatres.
- Upgrading of fire alarm system.
Neath Port Talbot Hospital
- Installation of three new modular theatres for orthopaedic, spinal and urology work.
Gorseinon Hospital
- Fire prevention work undertaken including the installation of a new fire alarm system.
Health board wide
- A new 38,000 square foot central medical records building has opened.
As hospitals run 24/7 and services are under pressure, shutting down for work to take place is usually not an option.
Mark said the provision of decant wards, spare wards where services can be relocated temporarily in order for building or maintenance work to take place, has been vital in achieving what they have and he praised operational colleagues for their ability to move wards and services around.
“Whenever we have got the funding we do the maximum we can when we have the ward vacant,” he said.
As for the future, the health board has a 10-year Estates Strategy which spans the breadth of its services.
A great deal of focus is currently on Morriston Hospital’s Emergency Department (ED) and the health board is talking to Welsh Government about both short and long-term investment.
The hope is to put a temporary measure in place very soon which will give the ED some much needed breathing space to reduce overcrowding. This is likely to be a modular building located next to the department. Proposals are also being developed for a purpose-built new facility in the future – subject to planning permission and funding being agreed.
Mark added: “We work hand-in-hand with estates and a lot of the infrastructure projects are behind doors and walls that the general public and staff don’t see.
“Given all the challenges we have got, I think that between estates and capital we do a pretty good job.”
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