The Fetal Medicine Research Institute is a leading clinical unit and research centre for the assessment and treatment of unborn babies, caring for more than 10,000 patients each year. This project was the construction of a 5,000m2 Centre of Excellence for the Fetal Medicine Foundation (Harley Street) to be operated by King’s College Hospital.
It involved the redevelopment of a row of four storey unoccupied terraced houses, which were run down and in need of extensive repair – they were retained, repaired and refurbished. The remainder of the buildings were part demolished / part retained and the new four storey clinical and research centre constructed in their place. The retained façade of the former terraced houses now forms the south elevation of the new building.
Paul understands the operational requirements of all projects he works on, through regular stakeholder liaison meetings before, during and after the construction programme. It is paramount to minimise disruption to the hospital’s operational services. Paul’s health and safety expertise was enlisted for the install of the precast concrete feature arches. All duty holders had to be cooperating and communicating with each other and coordinating their work. Each feature arch was manufactured off-site and brought to site in 9 sections. Temporary support structures were installed from ground to first floor to hold the first sections of the feature arches while the subsequent sections were crane lifted, guided and slotted into place, followed by extension of the support structures to accommodate the following section and so on until the arches were installed. In reality this was a difficult task, there was no allowance for slippage between sections of the arches and to result with a less than 1mm difference at any point of the four arches was an incredible achievement.
