By Vvon Engineering Team | Published | Updated
How to plan a decant, set dust and infection control boundaries, sequence the service shutdowns that actually stop clinical work, and move equipment that is still being used every day.
Medical equipment RFQ checklist (TXT)
Refurbishing an operating hospital requires a phased plan for patient care, construction hazards, equipment movements and recommissioning. The programme should be agreed by clinical, infection-control, estates and equipment teams before procurement or relocation begins.
The first question is not what the department will look like afterwards but where the work goes meanwhile. There are three answers: reduce the service, move it to another space, or split the department and work in phases. The cheapest to build is rarely the cheapest to run.
Compare phasing options against clinical capacity, temporary accommodation, infection-control controls, access and cost. More phases can add moves and interfaces, while fewer phases may remove too much capacity at once. Choose the arrangement the hospital can safely operate.
Agree phasing with clinical leads before finalising the design. Temporary access, partitions and services need their own approved arrangements and should be included in the programme.
Construction dust is an infection risk, particularly to immunocompromised patients, and it travels through ceiling voids and service penetrations that nobody drew. Treat every boundary as sealed.
Set dust barriers, airflow controls and monitoring through a construction infection-risk assessment. The design and verification depend on the patient group and work involved; a screen or tacky mat alone is not evidence that contamination is controlled.
Maintain a shutdown register showing affected services, clinical contingency, authorisation and the conditions for restoration. Coordinate changes through the hospital rather than leaving the contractor to select an interruption independently.
Choose work windows with the clinical team and document the capacity and emergency arrangements available during each one. Evening or weekend work is useful only where staffing, supervision and contingency remain adequate.
After equipment moves, inspect and recommission it according to the manufacturer’s instructions and the risk of the move. Functional, safety, calibration or performance checks should be selected by competent staff; not every item needs the same test package.
Measure the route: door widths, corridor turns, lift car and lift door dimensions, floor loading. The item that came in before a doorway was narrowed in an earlier refurbishment is a recurring surprise in older hospitals, and finding it at two in the morning with a crew waiting is expensive.
Schedule recommissioning, any required calibration and staff orientation before the clinical return-to-service date. Allow time to resolve faults rather than assuming all checks can be completed on the day of relocation.
A phase reopens on evidence, not on a painted wall, and the evidence pack is the same one a new department assembles at commissioning. Before patients come back, hold the verification records for any medical gas work, the electrical test certificates, water sampling where the system was disturbed, ventilation commissioning figures for changed air handling, a cleaning sign off after the builder's clean rather than instead of it, and recommissioning records for everything that moved.
Walk the completed area with clinical users, infection control, estates and the equipment team. Check real access, controls, storage and equipment positions and resolve acceptance issues before clinical reopening.
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