Dust, noise and vibration monitoring keeps patients safe and redevelopment on track at Birmingham Children’s Hospital

A hospital due to undergo extensive redevelopment works whilst the rest of the hospital remained live.

Project Overview

Birmingham Children’s Hospital provides specialist paediatric centre, caring for sick children and young people up to the age of 16. They are a global centre of excellence for complex heart conditions, the treatment of burns, cancer and liver and kidney disease.

The hospital was due to undergo extensive redevelopment works which included demolishing existing hospital buildings whilst the rest of the hospital remained live.

Challenge

GRAHAM was tasked with carrying out redevelopment works and had to plan carefully to navigate works around a live hospital environment. GRAHAM’s top priority was protecting workers, patients and hospital staff from potential heath hazards that could arise as the project progressed.

GRAHAM identified that with the scope of works planned and equipment that would be used for demolition, that dust, noise and vibration could be a serious health hazard and would require measuring at every stage.

Minimising disruption was a high priority, because if works disrupted usual operations, the consequences could be severe. For example, migration and inhalation of hazardous airborne contaminants such as dust could be life threatening to patients, especially those immunocompromised.

Solution

RVT Group supplied GRAHAM with 2 stands, each one housing a MONITEX^® Dust, Noise and Vibration monitor. By strategically locating these on the project dust, noise and vibrations were measured successfully. Placing the monitors next to doors in the live environment meant they measured the real impact from nearby works without being needlessly invasive for hospital staff and patients.

As the monitors record statistics in real-time and only alert when pre-set parameters are breached, there was little requirement for manual intervention once installed. Due to the sensitive environment that works took place in, it is not surprising that the measurements were reviewed a number of times to ensure GRAHAM kept on top of specific activities which required additional planning and care whilst underway.

With the GRAHAM team being able to rely on the measurements provided by the monitors supplied by RVT Group, it meant that site teams were able to focus on the job at hand, safe in the knowledge they would be alerted should reactive hazard controls be required.