St Peter’s Hospital, Chertsey is spread over a large site, and many of the properties are over 20 years old. In 2019, the NHS Foundation Trust had decided to install a generator farm to support the hospital.
Barton Knight Contracting successfully tendered for this 3-year, £7 million scheme in April 2020, but the
contract was deferred for a year.
In September 2020 there was a power outage at the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) in the Abbey Wing. The NICU lost all power (barring one small area) for around two and a half hours. After the power outage, the requirement to upgrade the Abbey Wing was accelerated. Barton Knight was asked to put a scheme together for the NICU based on the government’s Health Technical Memorandum 06-01 (HTM 06).
The guidance specifies all intensive care units should have three hours of continuous power available in the event of a power failure.
The Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) systems were too large to fit in the Abbey Wing, where the NICU was situated. So, Barton Knight designed a custom-built steel structure on the roof with a Glass Reinforced Plastic/fibreglass enclosure to house the UPS. The systems were installed via cranes, and retaining walls with handrails and trenches built around the units.
The final phase, completed in September 2021, includes civil work on the ground floor – one of the bases will house a new transformer providing power to Abbey Wing for NICU. The other base is a supplementary panel for an existing one, which had no capacity to support the IPS units.
In July 2021, the UK Power Network brought in a 11,000 volt supply to the transformer, installed by Barton Knight. A temporary generator has also been fitted to support Abbey Wing, which will eventually be replaced by the generator farm, part of the original resilience project for the entire hospital.
Barton Knight was able to provide a complete package from initial design to completion, including electrical installation, scaffolding, roofing and other building materials and works.
