Mercy Hospital Level 2 refurbishment

We converted a space that had been used as offices and storage for 12 years back into a 22-bed post-surgical care ward at Mercy Hospital, increasing operational capacity for the hospital without increasing the building footprint.

The late 1960’s era building required considerable work inside and out to bring it up to standard, including asbestos removal, services rerouting and upgrades, re-roofing, repainting, new double glazing, and removal of six old copper water tanks from the roof space.

The challenge was to cause as little disruption as possible in the busy hospital while working over two floors, with wards and operating theatres on either side of the construction areas and immediately below. We worked closely with the consultants from the planning stage to develop a programme, making the most of Christmas and Easter shutdown periods to complete disruptive work, and developed a methodology to enable us to access the site via an external scaffold. We also erected a 35-metre clearspan tent over the building to keep it dry while we replaced the roof and windows. Much of this careful planning needed to be revised due to shipping delays during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The water tanks in the roof space were still in use throughout the building, needing to be progressively re-livened on mains pressure systems or new gravity feeds as we progressed with the fitout.

We completed the first part of the ward, now known as the Callaghan Ward, in time for the hospital’s 85^th anniversary celebrations in July 2021, with the final stage following in January 2022.