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PRE-CLEANING NEW MAJOR HOSPITAL

System Hygienics recently completed a major pre-commission clean at the site of the new Peterborough City Hospital working with contractor Mercury Engineering.

This £335 million new hospital, built by Brookfield Construction (UK) Ltd, opened in November 2010 and replaced the Peterborough District Hospital, Edith Cavell Hospital and Peterborough Maternity Unit. The 612-bed, four storey hospital offers a full range of specialities including an oncology unit, expanded cardiac services, a dedicated women
and children's unit and a state-of-the-art emergency centre. The City Hospital therefore offers services for patients not previously available in Peterborough such as radiotherapy. This means that some cancer patients will no longer have to make the journey to neighbouring hospitals for treatment.

Mike Sharples, Project Director from Brookfield Construction (UK) Ltd, said: "This project is one of the biggest healthcare initiatives in the UK and the largest building project in Peterborough for over 800 years. The hospital is a landmark building and demonstrates a good working relationship between the client, the Trusts, the design team and contractors like System Hygienics."
 
System Hygienics' brief for the project was to pre-commission clean the hospital's ventilation systems to meet HVCA's TR/19 standards before the projects' completion date to allow time for commissioning. The 96,000 sq m hospital, with over 4,000 rooms, includes state-of-the-art facilities with ventilation systems serving the entire building including: intensive care units (ICUs); theatres; wards; technical rooms; canteens; and cleaning cupboards. The pre-commission clean included the in-situ ductwork, the air handling units (AHUs), the coils, and the ceiling grilles.

Due to the scale of the project, System Hygienics appointed a minimum of three operatives to be present on site at all times throughout the cleaning project, which increased to eight operatives during busy periods. A huge site with twelve individual plant rooms and a significant amount of AHUs, the project took five months starting in May and finishing in October, before the hospital's opening in November.

The hospital's ventilation ductwork was cleaned using System Hygienics' remote cleaning method, the Jetvent system. The system uses compressed air and a powerful high efficiency filtered extraction unit to achieve a fast and effective clean to the HVCA's TR/19 standards. As a result, the system thoroughly cleans the ductwork but also ensures contractors meet completion dates. The Jetvent compressed air system is a much more efficient and superior way of cleaning ductwork than other brush cleaning systems. Fewer access doors are needed and the Jetvent system hose drives through the ductwork, blasting the dust into the powerful extract airflow and following the form of the ductwork, whether square, flat or oval, ensuring all surfaces - including the corners -are clean.

The Jetvent system requires minimal access to ductwork since it can reach up to 50 metres from any access point, only requiring a 25mm access hole. At Peterborough City Hospital, most of the ductwork already featured access doors. This meant the System Hygienics team only had to create 20 access doors in the ventilation systems on the whole site. These doors were necessary to take samples from the ductwork before and after cleaning. Generally, hospitals direct the pre-commission cleaning team to take samples from areas such as ICU and theatres where HCAIs could pose a high risk to patients.

Although there were no significant technical challenges when it came to pre-commission cleaning Peterborough City Hospital's ventilation systems, health and safety was a significant issue on site. The compressed air system hoses need to run through the building, so it was therefore necessary for the System Hygienics team to send plans of the hose routes for approval two weeks before the pre-commission cleaning began to ensure the routes were compliant and safe. To reduce the health and safety risks, hoses were clipped to handrails where possible to avoid trip hazards.

System Hygienics provided detailed reports with before and after photos of all aspects of the ventilation systems along with a certificate of cleanliness and third party analysed HVCA TR/19 Vacuum Tests to verify the high level of cleanliness achieved.

For further information on ventilation duct cleaning click here or call us on 01323 481170.