Prater helps deliver hospital's new £430m Brunel Building

Prater, the UK's leading specialist envelope contractor, was selected by integrated support services and construction company Carillion to deliver an extensive scope of works to the new Brunel Building, at Southmead Hospital Bristol.

Upon completion in 2014, the state-of-the-art complex will offer patients the very best in facilities and will enable staff to deliver exceptional healthcare.

The 800-bed acute hospital is situated on a vast 27 hectares brown-field site within the restricted limits of the existing Southmead Hospital. Located approximately two kilometres north of Bristol city centre, the new hospital will provide world-class healthcare services to a local population of around half a million residents in and around Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire.

Upon completion, the hospital will offer a wide range of specialist regional services, which include A&E, neurosciences, plastic surgery, orthopaedics, pathology, and renal services, to which they will receive referrals from all over the UK and overseas.

Advanced works began at Southmead in August 2009 to provide modular temporary hospital buildings, to refurbish and reconfigure a number of the existing hospital buildings, to establish temporary car parking facilities, and to divert services in preparation for the main acute hospital’s construction.

The main hospital building has a floorspace of 115,000m2, ranging from four to six storeys.  It comprises two main building elements, which is joined by an atrium running the full length of the building. The atrium roof has three pyramid features (wind catchers) flanked by sloping wings, along its length. These roof structures incorporate movement joints and also make provision for differential building movement across the atrium. The roof also consists of a mix of flat slab and steel pitched aluminum, with some elements of green roofing incorporated.

Among its extensive scope of works at the site, Prater has delivered: 3,500m2 Kalzip roof, 900m gutters, 1,800m2 dummy louvres, 200m2 active louvres, 3,000m2 rainscreen to internal linings of atrium, 500m2 curtain walling, 300m2 glass louvres, 21,500m2 PermaTEC hot melt roofing, 16,000m2 SFS framing, 7,000m2 render rainscreen and wind catchers.

“Due to the size and complexity of the project it was no surprise that we encountered a range of unique challenges on site – namely the complicated construction of the wind catchers,” commented Phil Wood, Operations Director at Prater. “However, the whole project team worked really well together to overcome these issues to deliver an excellent product for the hospital trust.”

Phase Two, which consists of a visitors’ multi-storey car park, realignment of the existing estate’s road network and completion of hard and soft landscaping is scheduled to be completed in the summer of 2015, following demolition of the remaining facilities adjacent to the new hospital.  

Prater has a solid track record of providing external envelope solutions in the healthcare sector. Previous hospitals include Caerphilly Hospital in Wales and Walsall Hospital in the West Midlands.