In Western Sydney, healthcare needs are evolving as our population grows and
ages and people live longer.
We’re transforming the way we deliver healthcare, and the role that hospitals play
in our community to embrace emerging technologies and changing community
expectations. Here at Westmead,
we are part of the most exciting redevelopment of a health precinct
in Australia. There's a lot happening and we want to share with you all the work that
goes into building the first part of our Redevelopment – a new hospital
building. How do you build a hospital? First comes the planning. Then comes the
building. The planning can take several years, as there’s a lot to consider.
We care about our patients and the community and we have to ask ourselves
some big questions. How can we help people to be healthy over the next 50 years?
How can we better integrate our world-class research and education?
How can we design and building infrastructure for the future? What does
world-class clinical care look like for the next generation? To answer these
questions we have to know what our health needs are now and how they will
change in the future. We have to look at new ways of working. We have to develop
the right models of care for our patients. To do all of this we speak to
our staff, patients, carers and our community. This is all done
through project user groups called PUGs. PUGs work closely with patients, carers and
architects. They take all the questions that we asked ourselves and the answers
to design the new hospital building. PUGs are used at every stage of the hospital
development. Find out who your PUG representative is and how to get
involved. We really want to hear from you. So what does a PUG work on first? They
develop a Functional Brief. The Functional Brief tells the planners how
you work,
how you deliver healthcare and how your department works with other areas of the
hospital.
This phase also sees us work out how other important services interact with clinical
service delivery, like education and research. A big focus is on innovation
and finding a better way to do things.
The next phase is Concept Design and this is where it gets really exciting. We get
to start looking at drawings and pictures of the building, its size and
location. From there we look at flow – how the patients and services, as well as
staff, will move throughout the building and even how information travels between
departments and across the precinct as a whole. But we go even further and look at how
the precinct is going to interact with the transportation networks of the city
and the surrounding areas. We have to test this again and again to get it
right, even going back to the Functional Briefs and the Concept Design to make
sure we’re holding true. That’s when we move to Schematic Design. It includes
detailed architectural plans and layout for each floor, and it is at that time we have to
do the budget planning to make sure that we stay on budget and meet our priorities. Then
are ready for Detailed Design. This literally gives us the nuts and bolts of
the new building – right down to the power points and the furniture.
This is the plan the builder uses to create our new building. While the design
is finalised by the Local Health District and the project team, through the tender
and construction process, we must focus on transitioning into the new building.
. You will often hear this referred to as Commissioning. There is Building
Commissioning, where the project team ensure things like electricity, IT and
air-conditioning are working. We must focus on Operational Commissioning. Our
tools of the trade may have moved, departments that we may connect with may be
further away or closer, and new technologies may be in our workplace. We
must adapt to new ways of working and we must do that now.
And that’s how you building a hospital. The planning alone can take over a year. We use the
time between now and the opening of the new to introduce new models of
care, to test new processes and procedures, to get used to doing things
differently before we make the move, and to work out how we stay connected with
with teams and services in the existing buildings. You’ll be hearing plenty from the
project team because it’s a long and important journey that we are on. You see we’re not just building a hospital, we’re
building new services, new networks of
care and better ways of doing things.
We’re building health and we’re transforming lives.