Work is well advanced on the construction of a new private hospital for Waikato; Braemar Hospital will relocate from Tainui Street in Hamilton to Ohaupo Road, Gower Park, during the Easter holidays of 2009. The new premises will be almost double the area of the existing premises, enhancing the hospital’s ability to meet the increasing needs of patients from as far afield as Taranaki and the Bay of Plenty. Complementing Waikato’s leading surgical hospital is Braemar Day Hospital in Knox Street, Hamilton, which provides an extensive range of surgical and medical procedures for patients on a same day basis.

 The structural consultants on the project are Holmes Consulting Group, and when Project Engineer Blair Currie indicated that the material of choice for the structural frame was steel, he took into consideration the question of building vibration. “Modern engineering practice enables us to deal thoroughly with vibration,” says Blair. “All of the operating theatres are at ground level, and we needed to be satisfied that sensitive medical equipment would not be affected by vibrations caused by road traffic. In view of the future widening of adjacent Kahikatea Drive and Ohaupo Road, Tonkin and Taylor was engaged to provide specialist consulting services, assess ground vibration and see if mitigation measures are required.  If tests show that they are, one solution would be to excavate a 6m deep trench around the boundary and lower pre-cast concrete panels 120mm thick into the trench, grouting the joints together.”

The design team consisted of Blair Currie and Alan Park from Holmes, and Paul Overdevest and Richard Hill from Chow:Hill Architects Ltd.  Beca Carter Hollings & Ferner Ltd concentrated on the building services.  They all became strong advocates of using structural steel for this project.

 “Key to the success of the project,” says Richard Hill, “was the need to take advantage of good autumn weather and complete a structure that was weatherproof. This was essential for the intense and complex fit out that a hospital requires. Speed was of the essence, and the off-site fabrication done by Auckland Steel Limited ensured high quality control in a factory environment. Deliveries to the site were programmed to maintain maximum momentum for erection and enclosure. And the swift integration of the Corus-supplied Comflor 210 steel decking system kept up the tempo.

 “From an architectural perspective,” adds Richard, “the steel frame enabled us to design a building whose low structural volume made minimum impact on the space. It also afforded tremendous freedom for the installation of services and provided something crucial to hospital operations: adaptability. The healthcare service delivery processes in hospitals are continuously subject to change;  invariably these changes are technology driven. Steel affords Braemar Hospital a high degree of latent future-proofing.”

Auckland Steel fabricated and erected the structural steel

 There was another reason that steel was preferred; its lightness meant that foundation settlement issues were mitigated.  Blair Currie again: “Designing for fast erection, we really had to forward plan exactly how it was all going to go together: Universal Columns were fabricated to full height and arrived on site ready to receive floor beams via bolted connections at economical locations. This allowed the structural steel to be erected with limited site welding. The building’s lateral bracing is via a ductile structural steel frame system in one direction and ductile eccentrically braced K-frames in the other direction. To maximise the ceiling cavity space while keeping the floor to floor height as small as possible, we designed the steel floor beams to be encased in the floor slab. Comflor 210 was specified over Comflor 80 because of its greater spanning capability from beam to beam. Large areas of clear span floor space were dictated by the hospital’s operational needs.”