A metropolitan teaching hospital with diverse healthcare

Staged planning, delivery and handover

The seven-level clinical services building rises above a major metropolitan hospital, 27 kilometres north of Sydney’s CBD. At least eight clinical departments will operate in the new building, including an expanded Intensive Care Unit and a University of Sydney teaching hospital. 

We have worked closely with our client and multiple user groups to develop a five-stage delivery approach. This approach focused on carefully planning, procuring, decanting, demolishing and delivering each department. Departments were engaged and consulted before decanting, providing early access and staged handover. For specialist equipment such as the robotic pharmacy, we co-designed procurement strategies with our client and user groups to align with NSW Procurement Guidelines. This consultative, staged delivery approach reduced the overall program for the Hornsby Ku-ring-gai Health Service and optimised delivery through continuous user feedback. 

More services, closer to home

Hornsby Ku-ring-gai Hospital provides a wide range of inpatient and outpatient services to a diverse, multicultural and ageing local community. With more services and capacity required closer to home, the NSW Government committed to the State Significant Development in 2015 and as part of Australia’s largest portfolio of health capital works. The new and expanded clinical services includes: 

• Intensive Care and High Dependency Unit;

• Coronary Care and Cardiac Investigations Unit; 

• Cardiorespiratory Inpatient Unit;

• Medical Inpatient Unit;

• Rehabilitation Inpatient Unit;

• Ambulatory Care Centre;

• Mortuary:

• Robotic Pharmacy; and 

• Agile working spaces collocated with UNSW for training and development.

Innovative, collaborative consultation 

During extensive design finalisation, we conducted more than 200 user group workshops to ensure specifications matched diverse user needs. We provided a dedicated Clinical Planning and Health Specialist to oversee integration of services, in addition to the remaining design and construction team. Virtual reality (VR) modelling was used to test designs with staff and clinicians, support change management and enable more accurate planning for new models of care. VR technology and headsets were also made available to the hospital’s community over the three-year construction period to showcase the main entry way, ambulatory care reception, lobby, rehabilitation area, paediatrics and the intensive care unit.

Flexible delivery 

During construction, the scope was modified to incorporate a new helipad on top of the seven-storey building. We worked closely with our client to make this happen, implementing smart solutions to extend the fire stairs with swing scaffolding to support additional construction works over the already operational Medical Imaging building.