Welconstruct to build £3.7m sterile service centre in Berkshire
Leading fit-out specialist Welconstruct is set to deliver a £3.7m state of-the-art sterile services centre that will serve two major hospital sites in Berkshire.
Heatherwood Hospital, Ascot and Wexham Park Hospital , Slough will benefit from the new in-house unit that will be managed by the Heatherwood and Wexham Park Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (HWPH).
Welconstruct has been appointed to build the facility by Tony Downey, HWPH Head of Estates Capital Projects, in association with Estates Design and Technical Services (EDTS) who are the design and project administrators. The nine-month refurbishment and fit-out programme started this month with the unit scheduled to begin operating in October 2008, employing a total of 30 staff.
The new facility at Wexham Park Hospital will incorporate additional space made redundant by previous theatre upgrades to create a state-of the-art sterile services unit. The new facility will provide combined decontamination and sterilisation services for the trust, which provides hospital services and over 550 beds to a 400,000 population across East Berkshire and South Buckinghamshire.
Kevin Hill is sales manager for the health and sterile services division at Welconstruct, said: “The new unit will be responsible for cleaning and sterilising all the re-usable instruments and equipment used in the operating departments, wards, clinics and departments of the trust’s two main sites.
“Every item will be washed, checked, packed and sterilised. A labeling system will provide the date of sterilisation and autoclave and cycle numbers. All of the sterilised items will then be distributed back to the correct location ready for use. In total, the Wexham Park facility will deal with approximately 96,000 DIN baskets per annum.”
As a specialist contractor in on-site and super centre facilities, Welconstruct will provide utilities such as purified water, gas and medical air at Wexham Park as well as various M&E services.
The new unit will allow Wexham Park and Heatherwood Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust to achieve compliance with the EU Sterile Services Medical Devices Directive. This in turn will enable the Trust to market a sterile service for external customers. With the outcome of the scheme of such importance, EDTS followed a tender process whereby Welconstruct competed against five other companies to win the contract.
Welconstruct has been delivering sterile service facilities to both the public and private sector for over ten years. Previous Welconstruct projects include schemes for the Wolverhampton NHS Trust and the Homerton NHS Trust in London, and a £1.5m sterile services unit at the NHS Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre in Oxford.